My friend Dan and I spent a couple of weekends building several
cabinets for my friend Norma’s garage. We needed
to cut several dadoes for shelves into each cabinet and we needed a way to set up the
router quickly as we moved from cut to cut. So, we built a very simple jig to help
us quickly make those transitions.
Again, this jig is a very simple one and is identical in design to the
circular saw jig that I built some time ago. The
jig is merely two pieces of wood glued together, one atop the other. The bottom
piece is the base and will line up exactly along the line you wish to cut. The
top piece is just a fence that the router travels along to maintain a straight line.
The bottom board is kept a little too long when the jig is built and then cut to
exact length the first time the jig is used. After that, you just line up the
jig along the outside line for your dado and your cuts will be right on target.
This jig will only work with a ¾” straight cutting bit, which is what we used to
cut all our dadoes. Since using ¾” material is so common for shelves and other
projects requiring dadoes, this jig should be very useful for a long time.
