Dovetail Jig 'ShootOut' — Porter Cable Omnijig
 |
With the spacers set in the right order, Beth can adjust the height of the fingers so that they rest on the stack of wood (3/4" plus the 1/4") and lock it at that height. |
Next, Beth loosened an Allen screw and pushed the left stop so that the stop is at the "0" point. That is where the instructions say to set the tails board for the through dovetails. |
 |
|
|
She installed the tails board so that the left side is against the stop and the end is flush against the bottom side of the fingers. She clamps it here. |
Now it is time to adjust the spacing of the template fingers. Beth's right hand has loosened the positioning nut at the rear of the finger. The arrow points to a 3/16" brass setup spacer that is part of our router accessories. This is the dimension for setting the outside fingers, so that is what we do. |
|
 |
Beth sets the right hand finger the same way, |
She adjusts the two other fingers in between so that they are equidistant by eye. They do not have to be exact since once they are set, the tails and pins will both be cut with this setting and will fit together no matter what the spacing. |
 |
 |
This is what the final spacing looks like. Those are some cleverly designed fingers. Beth will be using the deep channels to run the dovetail bit to cut the tails and then will move the template back so that the angled pieces will guide the straight cutter in routing the pins. |
Before she can make any cuts, she has to set the depth of cut. She starts by scribing a line under a scrap of wood that is the same thickness as the matching pin board will be. |
 |
 |
Beth holds the router in place on the finger template and adjusts the depth of the PC890 series router. The arrow points to the micro-adjustment knob. She has set the bit depth to go right to her scribe mark. Actually, the depth control on this router is so exact that she can set the depth to be at the lower edge of the pencil mark. That way, she will have tails that are proud by the width of the pencil line. You can't get any better than that. |
It doesn't take long to cut the four dovetail sockets. |
 |
 |
Beth waited for the router to come to a stop before removing it from the jig. Now she can hang it safely in its place on the router storage stand we made. It works well. |
Before she unclamps the board, she inspects to see that her cut is all the way through the board and clean. |
 |
 |
She removes the board and inspects the cuts — can't get better than that. |
|
|