this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Can you explain how the jig works? I'm not seeing it.
For sure! The work piece is a piece of post base trim under my microjig gripper (the yellow thing, they are super handy and safe push sticks) that I needed to cut some wide dados in the back of to accommodate brackets I forgot to account for when I batched out all these trim pieces. But I don't want the dados to go all the way through so that the trim will still look normal once it's tacked in place. So I clamped a 2x4 behind the blade to stop the workpieces travel just before the blade would have gone all the way through.
The miter gauge has a 2x4 screwed into it and has some scrap clamped on the left side as a stop block for the right most portion of the cut. I then hog out swaths with the dado blade and move the workpiece to the right until it hits the fence which serves as a stop block for the left most portion of the dado cut.
The fence has a board clamped to it because this is my dedicated dado saw and I just never take it off.
I hope that makes sense the way I described it, but basically I've just created a jig where the work piece literally cannot be cut anywhere except for where I want it to. I'm just a dummy in a garage so I try to set things up so I can pretty mindlessly batch out things that are identical.
Also bonus PSA you should never use a miter gauge and a fence simultaneously on a through cut because it is damn near guaranteed to kick back at you. This operation is only safe when you are making non through cuts such as dados or rabbets.