Here’s a secret: I really want to get into building mid-century style furniture and one thing I’ve noticed is the tapered cut in a lot of furniture made in this style so I want to learn how to make that cut.
I did not intend to make this jig now, but I went into a rabbit hole of shopping for random crap on Amazon, so here we are.
I used some left over 1/2″ mdf just so there’s not too much height for the table saw top and also, to make sure that the bolts would reach. Those knobs came with the bolts and washers so I didn’t have to look for them separately. The hold downs also came with their own bolts made for t-tracks but they happen to fit in the same notches so that simplified things a bit.
On my “router table” that I made after I got my Skil router, I cut these notches using the same size bit as the bolts I’m using for the locking knobs. Then, I used another bit that’s the same size as the heads of those bolts so that it can sit flush underneath. If I remember correctly, they were 1/4″ and 1/2″ respectively.
Using it is super simple – just measure the length of the taper and line it up to the edge where the blade will go, lock down the fence and lock down the material with the hold down and glide it across the blade. File this under “I should have done this a long time ago”.
