For those special occasions

Half the fun of woodworking is building jigs, and many shop owners have a wall where they store their best ones – just in case they’ll ever be used again. While many are one-off pieces of art, some jigs see regular use and become essential to processing and joinery.

Most of us have built a cross-cut sled or a box-joint jig and still use it, and YouTube is rich with ideas for making such aids. But sometimes we need something special, or don’t have enough time to experiment or invent. That’s where commercial jigs come in.

FastCap (fastcap.com) has added an aluminum sled for Festool’s DF 500 Q Domino joiner to perfectly align face cuts in one board with side cuts in another.

SawStop (sawstop.com) is introducing the new Revolution miter gauge with a geared dial system for setting angles. Available in early 2024, the Revolution lets the user dial in fine adjustments and features a telescoping fence that offers a maximum crosscut of 37-1/2” using an included flip stop. The stop includes mounting holes for adding jigs or locking into the wedge system. The miter bar also has three adjustable pucks to eliminate side-to-side wiggle in the miter slot. The heavy-duty gauge may seem a bit pricey at $449, but will probably be the last one a shop ever buys.

At the other end of the spectrum, the new MatchFit Jig Handle from MicroJig (microjig.com) is a clever way to add an ergonomic handle to any jig that uses the company’s dovetail-grid base to make or build jigs. MatchFit is a system that adds clamping options to sleds and workbenches, and the handle makes it much easier to move sleds across a machine such as a table saw or shaper.

Kreg Tool (kregtool.com) offers the Rip-Cut and Accu-Cut circular saw guides, along with standard straightedges. The Rip-Cut follows the edge of a sheet being cut and can be set for rips up to 24” wide. It has a built-in measuring device, which eliminates the need for laying out a cut with a tape measure. The sled accepts most left- or right-handed circular saws, except worm saws. The Accu-Cut rips, crosscuts and makes angled cuts up to 50” long in sheet stock. It works on sheets that don’t have a straight, flat edge. No clamps are required to hold the track in place thanks to dual guide strips that have an anti-slip coating, and an anti-chip feature to prevent splintered cuts.

Bora Tools (boratool.com) makes 36”, 48” and 96” long clamping guides, and has just added a plastic saw plate that rides along all three.

Milwaukee Tool (milwaukeetool.com) makes a 106”-long guide rail that is compatible with the company’s 6-1/2” plunge track saw. It features anti-slip strips to keep the track from moving during cuts, and an anti-splinter edge strip. It’s also compatible with Milwaukee’s rail clamps, rail connectors, and track bag.

Pony Jorgensen (ponyjorgensen.com) makes a 50” long guide for use with jigsaws, circular saws, routers, and other portable power tools. It clamps to the work surface with a handlelocking mechanism, and has a ruler on top. For workpieces longer than 50”, there’s an extension rail and connector that doubles the length and handles the full length of a sheet of plywood.

The universal base on the TrackSawGuide from Milescraft (milescraft.com) fits most circular saws with up to 7-1/4” blades, except worm drive and rear-handle models. Its aluminum construction and low profile, with bottom-mounted clamps, let a saw cut through stock over 1-3/4” thick. It will handle sheets up to 50” long, plus angle cuts. And it can be made to any length required with the addition of optional GuideRail extensions. Milescraft also offers the inexpensive Edge&MortiseGuide, which is a universal router base that works with an edge guide to make straight cuts, and the CircleGuideKit that lets a router cut circles from 1-1/2” to 52” in diameter.

HValley Tools (hvalleytools.com) is the new name of the MLCS and Eagle America brands, and the catalog carries a good variety of jigs and cutting guides. HValley’s router straight-edge guides come in 24” and 36” options and have a one-handed rachet clamping system, jaws that automatically adjust to the stock size, and more than 100 lbs. of clamping pressure.

Magic from the mind of celebrated tool designer John Economaki has combined with the entrepreneurial skills of Jack Xu at Bridge City Tools (bridgecitytools.com). Along with some beautiful hand planes, the company also makes exquisitely engineered gauges, scribes, squares and specialty jigs such as the Tenonmaker and Kerfmaker. These are tools for setting up perfect tenons and saw cuts without all the measuring, or suffering through endless trial and error.

Texas-based Incra Tools (incra.com) makes a full catalog of jigs and cutting guides that are designed to bring a high degree of precision to woodworking. Included are miter gauges, sleds, fence systems, joinery jigs and a cornucopia of fixture parts. The company’s new Build-It System is a modular, highly customizable kit for creating common and special purpose jigs, fixtures and one-of-a-kind work helpers. It includes adjustable aluminum runners that slide in miter gauge slots, plus pre-cut and drilled panels, along with T-slot panel connectors and clamps.

MicroJig is currently offering a free Miter Stop when woodworkers buy one of the company’s 360 Sled Kits. This is a jig-building base that lets the operator clamp and secure material virtually anywhere on its surface using a dovetailed track system. The free stop can be paired with a ZeroPlay miter bar to limit sled travel and allow repeatable cuts.

Rockler (rockler.com) has dozens of proprietary jigs and cutting guides in its catalog, including a new one for creating a continuous drainage groove in the top face of a cutting board. The adjustable jig handles boards up to 18” x 18” and includes attachments to create corner radii, and also to rout channels around square, circular or triangular through-handle openings.

Klingspor’s Woodworking Shop (woodworkingshop.com) has a Jigs & Fixtures section that includes tracks, stops, drilling jigs, pocket hole and doweling jigs, T-slot clamps, and more.

Among the more unusual new layout tools at Lee Valley is a pair of washable tape measures (item No. 99W2016 at leevalley.com). They “combine all-stainless-steel inner parts and a sturdy plastic housing with a pattern of openings, so you can simply rinse or vacuum out any grit and debris that gets inside. This means you can use them outdoors, around sawdust, or in other less-than-ideal conditions without worrying about jamming the smooth action of the auto-retract mechanism,” acording to the company. They have both metric and standard inch measurements, and the tape is a full inch wide.

DeWalt (dewalt.com) has introduced a 25’ tape measure with an LED light.

A new gauge for setting up cutting tools is just beginning to roll out the doors at the JessEm (jessem.com) factory in New Brunswick. The height and depth gauge comes in two sizes and is made from 14-gauge stainless steel with a brass tightening wheel. Either of the units can be used vertically or horizontally to set the depth of cut for table saw blades, router bits, drill press bits, and the fences on various power tools. Micro-detents allow adjustments to 1/16”.

TigerStop (tigerstop.com) offers a handy tool on its website where woodworkers can configure their own solution for accurate, precise cutting. Called the Product Configurator, it lets a shop choose a basic caliber, fence or automated stop and then build in features that are very specific to the needs of the shop. For example, a woodshop making mitered cabinet doors or perhaps window parts can program the system with several different measurements and cut parts accurately as needed.

Another tool that crosses the line between machine and jig is the Shaper Origin (shapertools.com) which can be set up to deliver CNC quality repetitive cuts and joinery. The router-like tool can also be mounted in a fixed ‘workstation’ that turns a portable tool into a stationary machine for aligning, clamping and cutting with speed and precision.

And if all that isn’t enough to keep you out of trouble, spend an hour or two on the Woodpeckers’ website, woodpeck.com. It’s a treasure trove of jigs and cutting guides, and some very innovative ideas for bringing a greater level of accuracy to almost any aspect of woodworking. 

This article was originally published in the February 2024 issue.