Thread: Leigh D1600 Dovetail Jig - Done

Why did I buy Leigh – value for money. Some consider the Leigh jigs expensive but if you compare other jigs such as the Eurojig sold by Carbatec or the Gifkins their prices soon escalate with additional combs and router bits. These other jigs also do not allow for custom spacing of the pins and tails. Without this feature being available you cannot guarantee a half pin at each edge of the board being dovetailed. For these other jigs you need to customise the width of the board to fit with the preset dovetail spacing.
Compared to the Gifkins I also see a great benefit of secure clamping and the potential problem of long sides levering the jig out of square on a router table being non existent.

So, what can the Leigh D1600 do that the others cannot? Well it produces through and half blind dovetails with variations such as asymmetric dovetails as well as sliding dovetails. Their website also provides instructions for inlayed dovetail joints.

The D1600 has a capacity of 16 inches compared to around 12 inches (310mm) for the Gifkins and the Eurojig only 300mm for the jig that is in the same ball park price wise. Eurojig does have a 600mm version but this is virtually the price of the D1600 with only one comb producing half blind dovetails alone.

The D1600 has CNC precision machined surfaces at exactly 90 degrees on a one piece aluminium extrusion. It comes with an excellent manual presented in a very usable spiral bound format as well as an excellent instructional DVD. The D1600 comes standard with 3 router bits to get you going on both half blind and through dovetails. It also comes standard with a template guide to be mounted on the base plate of your router which is required by the Leigh jig. Adapters are required for some routers at a small additional cost.

Leigh also uses router bits with 8mm shanks that provide superior rigidity compared to ¼ inch shanks. Leigh provides a ½ inch to 8mm reducer for use in ½ inch collets. After market bits are available from Lee Valley in 8mm shank size and also from Carbitool (although only ¼ inch shank for the D1600) as well as other brands such as CMT. I have also purchased an Onsrud spiral upcut from Lee Valley (www.leevalley.com) to produce superior cuts compared to the straight cutter used when cutting the pins.

The Leigh jig also provides adjustability to make the dovetails joints looser/tighter. This may be required due to slight variations in eccentricity from using different template guides and bases on different routers. Once you have determined the setup for your particular setup you can consistently use the same jig settings which are recordable as a result of using scales on the jig.

Sounds a bit too good to be true. The one drawback I found when I first started using the jig was the balancing of the router when less than half the base plate was sitting on the fingers at the start of the routing process and in between each tail cut. I even started thinking about ways to make a jig that would support the router. Before I could start making a prototype Leigh announced their VRS (vacuum and router support). Theirs was definitely way ahead of any of my plans. I waited months to get my hands on one and a trip to Canada was just a bit too early to pick one up. I did however visit their factory just outside Vancouver and picked up a few extra router bits as well as a tour of their factory premises. Whilst I was there they discussed their new range of super jigs. They are cheaper as they do not go through the CNC machine and have plastic rather than metal sides. The body is made up of two pieces of aluminium extrusion rather than the single piece of the D1600 and the big brother D4R (24 inch version) I am yet to see any comparison of accuracy between the machined versions and the new superjigs.

After receiving the VRS I quickly set-up the extra pieces and I can now report that this is a truly remarkable setup. The VRS does its job well supporting the router so you just guide rather than guide and balance. The vacuum box works well picking up approximately 80-90 % of the shavings.

Leigh’s backup is first rate with information available on their website
www.leighjigs.com
including the manuals that can be downloaded, technical updates, an ordering system for router bits and guides as well as a number of video clips. I have sent emails on a few occasions and have always had prompt and meaningful responses. One query was to ask whether they had produced a metric version of a chart in the manual. They quickly produced one and sent a pdf file via email. It is not often you get service like that.

Leigh jigs are available in Australia from Carbatec.