I am building a shoes rack and want to use box jionts for the case construction with dadoed deviders. My question is how to cut the box jionts on the largest case peices (60″L x 12″w). Too big to stand on end on the table saw I am hoping to find plans for a jig to take to the piece.
Thanks!
Replies
Mark them out like you would dovetails and cut them by hand or at the bandsaw. You'll be done in less time than it takes to design and build a jig that you'll never use again but will save forever anyway.
Or just make dovetails!
I made a wall-hung tool cabinet using box joints. I already had a box joint jig for 1/4" and made one for the 1/2" joints for this cabinet. The long pieces weren't that bad, but it's only three or so feet tall; maybe your pieces are longer. I clamped a tall fence to it and clamped the piece to that tall fence. It's a little slower than working box joint jigs for shorter pieces but it was safe and the results were quite satisfactory.
A woodrat could do it, as the plank hangs down from the rat jaws and you use the router to cut the top end of the plank. Of course, you would have to have your woodrat mounted high off the ground to deal with that 60" plank o' yourn. And woodrats are expensive, if you don't already have one.
For some reason, hand cut finger (box) joints are harder to get right than are dovetails. The slightest error shows up and you spent time stuffing gaps with glue-painted veneer of a matching timber (if you have any). Perhaps splined mitre joints will be better? Or you could always do secret mitred dovetails. :-)
Lataxe
Were I trying this on the ranch back in the day, I'd have myself a the table saw and a friend on a ladder up above holding the wood and trying to move it about the same speed. We did lots of unsafe stuff back then and miraculously I still have all my fingers.
Never heard of a wood rat, but it sounds like something I'd want to shoo out of my shop! :)
I'm curious, why the choice of box joints in this piece of furniture?
The woodrat:
https://woodrat.com/
It was invented by the bloke selling it, as a 3D hand-operated sort of CNC machine for moving a router and its cutter along with the workpiece to cut all sorts of traditional woodworking joints. It doesn't use templates, like a lot of router jigs for cutting dovetails, but instead allows the user to place and size joints in a great variety of ways.
When the patent ran out, an American version came on the market but I haven't seen it for years so perhaps it failed to gain a toehold. Someone else may know about it.
I've had a woodrat for years and did use it a lot to cut dovetails and M&Ts, once upon a time. I use it a little still but got more interested in hand tool work so the woodrat is often quiescent for months now.
Small box joints can be most easily cut by machine, no doubt. I still use a Veritas router table with a cross-cut arm - having a built-in variable-width key and backing block - for cutting finger joints of various sizes, using spiral-edged straight bits of various diameters. (We don't use dado blades in EU tablesaws much; or at all, really). My few hand-cut box-jointed items are OK but a lot less precise at the finger interfaces and rather stuffed with veneer in the gaps - which doesn't show unless you look very closely. Still .....
***
I can understand the appeal of box joints to the OP. Like plain dovetails, they're "honest" joinery. (Joinery you can always see). This is one of the major themes in Arts & Crafts furniture of many styles - the function of the joint displayed rather than hidden in favour of a smooth or decorated facade.
They're also very strong, with lots of long grain to long grain glue faces for each corner.
Just lately I've been making boxes with .... box joints, in various styles. A FWW box-making article (forget which one) pointed out that small box making is a very demanding and educative way to learn many joint making techniques without using loadsa wood. They demand precision if the box is not to look like a bit of a dog's breakfast, as the slightest error somehow gets magnified in a small item.
I've come to like proud or cogged box joints (the ends of each tongue sticking out and shaped to a curve or with facets - a bit like some Greene & Greene joints. In the right piece they give a certain medieval or Gothic look. The rounded-end ones are also very tactile.
Lataxe
The Router Boss is alive and well and still available through the Craftsman Gallery at Chipsfly.com I have a WoodRat but replaced it with the Router Boss when it was released. (The WoodRat is in a box in my brother's shop. Thought he might use it. Will probably scrap it out, though.)
The machines are very useful for all sorts of joinery with a router including box joints and dovetails.
Something like this would get what you want done.
https://www.woodsmithplans.com/plan/finger-joint-jig/
I've actually built something similar to that Woodsmith jig. David O. Wade was the first furniture maker I saw using such a thing. Woodsmith just refined it. It works perfectly.
That looks a possibility but the difficulty for the OP is the 60" length of the planks he wants to finger-joint on each end. A jig like that would need to be mounted quite high, in some way, with the router doing the cutting up at head height - unless the operator stands on a step of some sort.
Perhaps a tall carriage of some sort could be knocked up to sit clamped to a normal height benchtop, with the jig on top of the carriage and the user standing on a stool to operate the router?
The width of those 60" long planks is also 12". That's quite a heavy plank to have hung from such a jig. It might be possible to refine the height of the whole caboodle so the router & jig are at the right height with the lower end of the plank just touching the floor .......
Lataxe
I would just clamp the workpiece upright to a workbench or similar, clamp the jig to the workpiece and stand on something.
60" isn't that high, it's only 5 feet. If you're taller than that, it'll keep you from bending over to see the work. I have my miter saw mounted up high (with drawers and stuff underneath). After 35 years in the trades, I was tired of bending over to see the pencil lines. Now, I barely duck my head.
So, making a jig or fixture to use your router with shouldn't be all that bad.
Honestly, I'd just run it over the table saw with my finger joint jig.... 12" width adds some stability. As long as it's not some crazy heavy wood, would it be that bad with a tall fence to clamp to? But, I'm used to doing crazy stuff, that's not always the safest, on the jobsite... Because it's got to get done.
Or, I'd cut them by hand.
YMMV, and remember, I'm just a dumb woodworker... I don't always give the best advice!
“ I would just clamp the workpiece upright to a workbench or similar, clamp the jig to the workpiece and stand on something.”
This is just how I saw the jig originally used. For shorter boards I clamp to the workbench top, for longer boards I clamp to the work piece itself.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled