Thread: Router morticing jig (improved version)

Hi Rocker,
I see we are in competition on mortise jigs, my problem with router mortices is the tear out you get at the end of the cut, but using the saw table the shoulder line is cleaner!!

I have seen your jig as you know, but I think the high quality of timber plays a part with your set up.

Originally Posted by jow104

Hi Rocker,
I see we are in competition on mortise jigs, my problem with router mortices is the tear out you get at the end of the cut, but using the saw table the shoulder line is cleaner!!

I am slightly confused here, John. I think you must be referring to cutting tenons rather than mortices. If I use my jig to cut tenons (which I rarely do - I usually cut them with a table-saw tenoning jig), I cut the shoulders first on the table saw, so as to avoid tear out. I should have cut the shoulders first for the picture showing my jig in tenon-cutting mode.

I do use my morticing jig for tenoning when I am cutting multiple tenons on on small pieces of exotic timbers like ebony, for a set of drawer pulls, for example. In this case it is better to rout the tenons, to avoid continually swapping set-ups on the table saw between shoulder cutting and cheek cutting modes.

Rocker

Quite correct Rocker, I should have typed Tenon. Put it down to my advancing years!

hello, im new to this forum stuff so please bear with me. i'm looking for a blueprint for an ajustable router mortising jig, one that will adjust to any thickness of workpiece and size of mortise. is there any one out there who can help me? this is my first post.

May I welcome you Dusty, I have a super mortice jig see my web page
http://homepages.tesco.net/john.jt

Rocker on this forum is an earlier competitor of mine and also has an extremely nice jig. ( I think it might be scottish ancestory?)

Dusty,

Whether you go for devonwoody's jig or mine will depend onhow much effort you want to put into building the jig. If you want quick and easy, go for his. If you want high precision, build mine. Private-message me your e-mail address, if you want my plans for the jig.

Rocker

There is also a video showing a mortise jig on the Fine Woodworking web site.

Mortise Jig.

Take your pick.


Ben.

Thanks to Rocker for emailing me the plans and details for this and his tenoning jig.
WIth a fair few M&T joints to do in the upcoming weeks, read months, I reckoned it was time to get serious.
Now I gotta get serious and build the suckers. :eek:

The Rocker jig is a nice piece of work but if you have a great number of mortices to produce my mortice jig can easily produce 32 mortices in under the hour and if you want precision use the depth stick on a calipper when setting up the fence of the mortice jig.

Thanks Jow, before asking Rocker for his plans, I did visit your site. It maybe my browser, but the text in the jig details page was a bit jumbled up.
Output speed is not important to me, this is just as well cos things seem to take an in-ordinate amount of time around here.
I did a bit of looking, and actually have a few plans on hand already, but Rockers seemed to me, at least, to be able to produce the most accurate results, for both the mortice, as well as the tenon jigs. Certainly there is a hell of a lot more work to make Rockers jigs, but, hell it's all playing with wood, so who gives a tinkers cuss.

I certainly don't wish to denegrate your jig in any way, I am sure it performs very well, its a bit like a lot of things in here, just personal choice.

No problem Outback. Just giving Rocker a wind up.

Play time has been somewhat limited so it has taken a while to build Rockers jig. But I finally finished and used it in anger last weekend. I cut 16 mortices in a few minutes,

They are all very neat and in the same spot in each piece of timber, just the effect I was after. Because of its simplicity in setting up more time is spent doing the job than stuffing around getting organised.

Next I gotta cut the tenons on the jig I made from Rocker.

Outback,

It was good to hear that you are finding my jig useful and effective. I have finally managed to get the article on it accepted by a British woodworking magazine - Good Woodworking, but I haven't yet managed to crack the US magazine market. The FWW mortice jig that Ben mentioned seems to be similar in principle to my 'Morticing jig lite', although I think my lite version is better Perhaps the Americans are put off by the work involved in building my jig, but I think that the time that it saves in cutting mortices soon makes up for the day or so that it takes to build the jig. Perhaps, the American magazines don't want to upset the makers of commercially made morticing jigs.

Rocker