12 December 2009

Spline Jig, part trois and BOGOF



At long last, after what seems an absolute age, the bedroom decoration has finally been done and dusted which means that I'll be able to get back to doing a bit of woodwork at the weekends. As it's Sunday tomorrow, I may well treat myself to a whole day in the 'shop, which is just as well really 'cos I've got another big picture frame do for one of the lads at work.

The two pics show the third and final version of a spline jig that I developed, as I like to reinforce mitres with a couple of solid wooden inserts in a contrasting timber. You can see that there's an element of 'slidablity' with the design as the toggle clamp block is free to move in a couple of slots and can then be locked in position.

The first version was very similar, but used the circular saw blade to cut the slot... inherently lethal as the riving knife and crown guard had to be removed and as I'm very partial to keeping all my pink fleshy bits in tact, that one got rapidly put to one side.

The next version used my small router and was really a sort of lash up that was held in the bench vice. It worked, after a fashion, but it was a bit unstable so I thought the ideal solution was to adapt something for the router table.

This final version though, doesn't have to be used just for picture frames. Because of the adjustablity in the design I'll also be able to use it for splines in the corners of boxes...two for the price of one!

2 comments:

Torch02 said...

I like it. How did you decide upon the placement of the cutting slot on the jig? Did you try to balance the size of the jig against its versatility, or did you size it for the project you were working on at that time?

Woodbloke said...

Sizing was judged on previous experence from the other two jigs and the approximate placement of the splines. The slots allow an adjustment of about 40mm which for most applications ought to be fine.