Hello,
I just finished building/assembling the dovetail jig from Woodsmith #58. A friend of mine built this about 6 years ago and loved it. I figured, hey I can save $40 (off of the PC version) and build my own too. Except now that I'm done I wish I'd have just bought the PC one and been done with it. Oh well, that's neither here nor there at this point.
Anyway, my question is about the "comb" template itself. The one with woodsmith isn't available for purchase anymore and I wasn't interested in building my own out of masonite. So I searched the web and found a JET one that I bought.
There's a difference between the two though. The WS (Woodsmith) one is 7/16" between each comb and the JET is 1/2". Also, the depth of each comb is 1" on the WS and 1-1/2" on the JET.
My guess is that I just need to adjust the stop to compensate for the
1/2" opening vs. 7/16" opening (previously the stop was 7/16" and I would guess I just need to make it 1/2"). This shows up in the two adjoining pieces being offset by a little bit (haven't measured yet -- looks like 1/16" - 1/8").The next question is about the depth of the opening on the template. In the instructions it shows that you place the center of the opening (depth wise) to be between the two pieces of wood (or the line where they touch/meet in the jig). Hope that makes sense. Anyway, that ends up leaving 1/4" in front of the template on a 3/4" drawer (for the WS) but on mine (JET) the template meets the end of the drawer side exactly. Thus my pins are a full 3/4" and the sockets (tails?) are 3/4" deep. That doesn't seem to make much of a difference that I can tell, but I'm not sure how that will work on 1/2" stock. Should I put a 1/4" spacer between the stock and the jig to make up for the depth on the opening?
Thanks for your help, Mike S
PS. I searched the archives and didn't find anything on this issue, just "I like the jig" vs "I kinda like the jig" vs "I just went and bought the PC instead".