Hello,
I just finished building/assembling the dovetail jig from Woodsmith
#58. A friend of mine built this about 6 years ago and loved it. I
figured, hey I can save $40 (off of the PC version) and build my own
too. Except now that I'm done I wish I'd have just bought the PC one
and been done with it. Oh well, that's neither here nor there at this
point.
Anyway, my question is about the "comb" template itself. The one with
woodsmith isn't available for purchase anymore and I wasn't interested
in building my own out of masonite. So I searched the web and found a
JET one that I bought.
There's a difference between the two though. The WS (Woodsmith) one
is 7/16" between each comb and the JET is 1/2". Also, the depth of
each comb is 1" on the WS and 1-1/2" on the JET.
My guess is that I just need to adjust the stop to compensate for the
1/2" opening vs. 7/16" opening (previously the stop was 7/16" and I
would guess I just need to make it 1/2"). This shows up in the two
adjoining pieces being offset by a little bit (haven't measured yet --
looks like 1/16" - 1/8").
The next question is about the depth of the opening on the template.
In the instructions it shows that you place the center of the opening
(depth wise) to be between the two pieces of wood (or the line where
they touch/meet in the jig). Hope that makes sense. Anyway, that
ends up leaving 1/4" in front of the template on a 3/4" drawer (for
the WS) but on mine (JET) the template meets the end of the drawer
side exactly. Thus my pins are a full 3/4" and the sockets (tails?)
are 3/4" deep. That doesn't seem to make much of a difference that I
can tell, but I'm not sure how that will work on 1/2" stock. Should I
put a 1/4" spacer between the stock and the jig to make up for the
depth on the opening?
Thanks for your help,
Mike S
PS. I searched the archives and didn't find anything on this issue,
just "I like the jig" vs "I kinda like the jig" vs "I just went and
bought the PC instead".