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Making Jigs to Fit
Your Miniature Needs
Defined as: jig
[jig] -noun, jigged:
Machinery. a
plate, box, or open frame for holding work and for guiding a machine
tool to the work, used esp. for locating and spacing drilled holes;
fixture.
While this is a very simple definition of the word jig, it gives you
some idea of what is jig is for. It is designed for a specific job
to make repeated actions easy and precise. One of the best
examples of a common jig is a miter box, designed for cutting a left or
right 45° angles without having to spend a lot of
extra time and effort finding the correct angle, marking the angle, and
making sure you're cutting the angle squarely.
But what we're concerned with here are jigs that aren't readily
available over the counter, and need to be made for our specific job.
It would be impossible to describe every jig possible, let alone
every job a jig can be used for, mainly because my skill is in building
furniture and not the hundreds of other skills required in making
miniatures. But what I can do is give some examples that I have
used, and how to make them, and share your jigs with others if you would
like to share them here.
me with any jigs you would like to share
and I'll add them to the page.
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 Miter
Box Length Jig
& Table Saw
One of the simplest jigs is the addition of a
block of wood to a miter box as a stop for the length of wood
you want to cut. The pictures can be enlarged by clicking
on them. The enlarged picture to the left allows you to
see that all it takes is a piece of wood placed where you want
it and held in place with a clamp. The rest is just
sliding the piece of wood you want to cut to the block -- and
cutting. You can do this 1 or 100 times and it works quite
well. Remember to keep the area next to the stop block
clean, else it might change the length you're cutting.
You can adapt this idea to a table saw as well. Using your
miter guide to guide your wood through the blade - attach a
piece of wood to the edge of the table saw, set to the length of
the wood you want to cut. REMEMBER: Never use both the
fence and the miter guide on the same cut. What we are
doing here is simply using a block of wood as a stop to achieve
the length needed to cut the wood, and as the miter guide is
pushed forward past the stop - the stop won't be able to bind the piece of
wood being cut. The picture below shows what I mean.
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 Thickness
Sander Jig
Having the luxury of a power thickness sander
is something I went without for over 30 years, and finding wood
exactly the right thickness for the piece of furniture I was
building is still something I have problems with today. So making the wood the
right thickness was something I had to do by hand, and believe
me, without this jig it would have been nearly impossible.
To create this jig, just select a
piece of wood wide enough
to accept a dado plus at least a 1/2 inch on either side of the
piece that needs to be sanded. Using the miter saw cut to the
depth of the thickness of the piece of wood you want sanded -
then cut the excess out using the strip cutter or a chisel.
Next glue a
retaining piece to
one edge of this jig to hold the side piece in place while
sanding.
At both ends of the jig glue another piece of wood running
perpendicular to the dado.
It is very important that the side pieces are glued in the
correct position. To do this, cut a strip of the sand paper
you're going to use to sand the pieces, just slightly wider than
the piece your sanding, sit the dado section on the sand paper
and then glue the side pieces in place making sure the entire
jig is square, also make sure the side rails touch the table NOT
the sand paper! -- this way they will act as a stop when you're
sanding the side pieces.
Using this jig will speed up the sanding process greatly, and
increase the accuracy of each side piece. Using a strip of sand
paper, sand each pieces of wood - make sure the side rails on
the jig remain on the table and not on the sand paper. |
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 Drawing
a Curve
Drawing a curve can be a real pain, especially
if you don't have the proper tools to do the job.
The easiest method I've found is to use a thin piece of wood and
4 magnets and a gluing jig (or piece of metal) to hold the
wood in place while I draw the line. Enlarge the picture
by clicking on it to see what I mean. |
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