Here's mine, an adaptation of a design I saw in FWW. IMHO, it's far better than the Delta jig I had. The last couple of shots show how I use it for cutting finger joints. The dial indicator is key to its usefulness. It reduces the number of test cuts to one: make the test cut, measure how far you're off with feeler gauges, and make that same adjustment on the dial indicator. You're spot-on from then on.
I make my mortises with a mortiser, and have a set of spacers that are equal to the width of the mortise plus a saw kerf. I cut one tenon cheek without the spacer in place, and the other cheek with the spacer in place (this is the method described in the instructions for the Delta jig). With this method, the tenon width always comes out a perfect piston-fit in the mortise, once you get the spacer right. The tenon itself may not be perfectly centered, but so what if it's a liltte off; that's what the one test cut is used for - to dial the tenon offset in perfectly, so that the surfaces of rails and stiles are on the same plane. IMHO, this method is far superior than the "Norm" method, that places so much unwarrented importance on getting the tenon perfectly centered.








-------------------- I do not fault them one bit. What they say and feel about hand tools may very well be true. Yet to be able to make a living and produce enough work to do so, I use whatever tools will do the job most accurately and most efficiently. - Sam Maloof
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