Technique help on drilling for shelf supports ???

[mbaybut]

I do recall some time ago a home made jig for drilling the holes for cabinet shelf supports. All comments welcome. Mikey

[Chipper Wood]

FWIW. Peg board makes an excellent pattern jig for evenly spaced holes/lines. It can be used at an angle to divide to even spaces of infinite sizes.

[Upscale]

I bought some of these for a home made drilling jig from Lee Valley Tools. They work as advertised, are reusable, easy to set up and cheap enough so as not to break the bank.

[J. Clarke]

have some additional sizes that they sell for the Veritas 32 system--no reason they won't work standalone though. . There's one size that isn't hardened so you can drill it to whatever diameter you need.

[JAW]

I second the pegboard method. Just make sure your mark it (i.e what is the top/bottom, centerline). I have used one for a couple of years now on all sorts of cabinets. Make sure you clamp it to the piece to prevent the template from moving.Also make sure it is snug against the piece when you drill the hole, so you do not get any tear-out along the edge of the hole.

JAW

[e-mail] wrote:

[Roland Hart]

I purchased the 1/4" jig from rockler and bit set 22658 from rockler and it works great. The bit has a bushing that allows goes into the holes and doesn't cut the plastic jig. There is also a depth stop on the bit to drill the holes to the proper depth.

[Jeremy]

I just finished some frameless cabinets for my garage and used the pegboard method - worked great. I attached a scrap board to one side (should have done two sides) to make alignment faster. I also used another scrap (you could use a large dowel) with a hole down the center to keep the hand drill from going too deep. It was very simple, made entirely from scraps, and worked great.

[Wilson]

Upscale is right! At $4.60/hole it seems pretty dear to me. Let's see...6' bookcase, maybe

>

[Upscale]

Not sure the Veritas 32 system parts would be able to do the same thing. The bushings alone are twice the price and the part numbers are completely different. Are they properly threaded enough to screw into a piece of wood? Doesn't matter I guess, to each his own.

[NoOne N Particular]

I sixth the pegboard method. I have used it several times and the only comment I could add to the other comments would be to use a good sharp brad-point drill bit to further help reduce tearout.

Wayne

[Dave]

Check out the jig that rockler has. I like mine very much.

[gandalf]

------------------ Well, Norm has a pretty neat and simple jig for this task.

You just need a length of MDF. Mark up hole postions and then drill out the jig with oversized holes that will take a Router guide bush. To put the holes in the workpiece just clamp on the jig and use a plunge router with guide bush and fitted with the appropriate bit set to depth and you can get a perfect repeatable result. All with no wear and tear on the jig.

[Lee Gordon]

A Vix bit is even better but for some reason, while an ordinary vix bit costs $5 or $6, one that is precisely the right size for shelf pins costs 3 or 4 times as much. Hmm.

Lee

[J. Clarke]

You only need one of them of each size. You make the holes in the jig big enough to take the bushing, clamp down the jig, put the bushing in the first hole, drill, move it to the second hole, drill, move it to the third hole, drill, etc. If you get a couple of indexing pins then you can move your jig and maintain alignment without too much difficulty, so you don't need one the full length of the piece.

At the bottom of the Veritas 32 page, where you would click to order, next to "Basic System" there's a link "instr". That's the instruction manual for that system--read it and I think you'll have a better idea how to use the bushings. You may pick up some other ideas for making your own.

The Veritas 32 page is . I can't provide a direct link to the instructions as they're accessed via a javascript application on that page for some reason known only to Lee Valley.

>>>

[J. Clarke]

In my earlier post I gave the wrong link to the Veritas 32 page from which one can access the instructions. It's .

Sorry.

[Nova]

You're not the only one who has noticed that.

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

[Earl Creel]

(SNIP)

AND it is very fast. It takes less than a second to plunge a 1/4" spiral router bit 1/2" into wood. It takes longer to move the router from hole to hole than to actually cut each hole. Earl Creel

[igor]

Do you recall if Norm had a jig to get the holes aligned & spaced right in the mdf?

[gandalf]

------------------- If he did I'm sure his elves knocked it up for him. (pegboard might help) ;-)

[Mike]

I just take an appropriate ripping scrap and drill holes spaced where i want shelves and use it for a jig. But I'm sure there are ways to make this more complicted, time consuming and expensive

mike