wip building a handheld mortising jig

[hobby]

　
Hi Guys I'm working on building a hand held mortising jig for my palm router, for making loose tenon joints in my woodworking projects.
I am also posting this over on a woodworking forum I belong to as well, as a work in progress, the people over there are recieving this with great acceptance, even though it is all metal maching work, they are enjoying the build process.

Because this is homeshop machining, I am posting this on here as well, to share with my machining friends.

Here is some pics of the work in progress.

I have some left over bar and plate material of aluminum,

1


here is the palm router base ready for layout and cutting of the 1/2" thick aluminum stock





Now after its cut it needs to be machined on its cut edges, to bring everything into square.



Now the screws on the router baseplate are short, so I need to mill out the profile of the router subbase, so it leaves the router subbase thickness left, which is around 3/16" in thickness.









Now to machine out the pocket for the router base to fit into.





it was slow going until I remembered I have roughing end,mills I could use to hog out material quicker.



now to mill out another pocket where the router fence attachment tangs are located on the router base.





now its all milled out ready for dry fit.





to be continued

 

[hobby]

A transfer punch is used to locate only one hole in the router base.



once the hole is drilled thru with a bit large enough for a clearance for the screw, it is then coutersunk,



then with the screw tight in place, the remaining 3 holes can be transfer punched, and drilled also.





a check to see how everything is fitting.



the router installed



now I need to attach a second piece to be the start of the "x" axis bed plate, it is the left hand side of the drawing.





again I drill all 3 holes in the plate, then set it tight to the second plate, and transfer a punch mark through the center hole only.



then drill and tap this one hole, only..





Now the 2 plates are screwed tight together, and I can transfer punch the remaining 2 holes.





Now the bottom plate has a milled square edge, but the plate at the right was not machined at the joint, this plate has some cantor to it on the width of it, so when I but the plates together there is a small gap showing out of square, to check for a good square result, I need to reliable reference points, one is my surface plate, the other is a machinists tool block called a "123" block, these blocks are supposed to be reliably square at all surfaces with eachother.

By using this combination, I can get a reliably square assembly.
I found to make the assembly square I needed to put a thin paper shim just a little on the top edge of the butt joint to tilt the right plate out a little to make full contact evenly with the 1-2-3 block.



to be continued

 

[hobby]

Now everything shows good squaring now I can tighten the screws and add back the router base to see how it all is coming together.



Next I need to cut two 45deg. angle brackets to give ample support betwween these 2 plates, the brackets will go on both the left and right side of the router base, to form the whole assembly as a big angle block, with a router stuck in the center.
Once that is done, then I can start thinking of the x and y axis traversing rails.

This is going to be a project that will probably take me through the winter, as I have more commission work to be done during the days, this project is a late afternoon work, a couple hours each evening, hopefully to be done by Christmas, so I can know I can eliminate a biscuit joiner from my list, and choose a different tool I really need.
　
Have fun in the shop.
　

 

[Swifty]

I will be following with interest. I noticed that green cutting board in your pictures, I have 2 somewhere but can never find them. I occasionally come across them, but never at the time think to put them aside. I suppose they will turn up eventually.

Paul.

 

[Herbiev]

Looking great. As a guitar maker I have made dozens of jigs. You can't beat them for repeated accuracy

 

[hobby]

Thankyou guys:

I'm going to continue the rest of this build thread in the "Breakroom" forum,
In my opinion,it seems to be the most appropriate area for this kind of project to build.(woodworking jig)

see ya in the breakroom,