[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] It's time for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

You know, small, handheld routers are my favorite portable power tool.

There's just so many things you can do.

And on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're building two problem-solving jigs that will unlock the potential of your small router.

The first jig is a miter trimmer, and who hasn't had trouble with cutting accurate miters?

Well, with this jig, you can fine-tune those cuts for perfect, airtight fits when you're working with molding, whether it's for a furniture project or around your house.

The other jig that we're gonna make is for cutting tenons, and it allows you to turn your handheld router into a tenon-cutting powerhouse.

You'll cut smooth, accurate, tenon cheeks and shoulders.

Now, both of these jigs are easy to build and don't require a lot in terms of materials or complicated hardware.

And you can build them in an afternoon and then get started putting them to work.

If you'd like to make one or both of these jigs for your shop, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

I think it's time to get things started.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Well, the project that I'm going to be working on today is a fun one.

It's a jig for trimming miters.

Now, who among us has not had a frustrating time fitting miters on some project?

One of the things that makes miters challenging is how do you tweak them to get that perfect fit after we've made that preliminary cut?

A lot of times, after you've cut a miter -- let's say you're using a miter saw or your table saw on a miter gauge -- it's really hard to take just a thin whisper off that miter.

The blade, the mechanisms -- they tend to flex a little bit and you end up almost getting a curve.

So how do we do that?

Well, of course, one way is with a shooting board and a miter plane.

And that works fantastic.

But here is another method.

We're going to use a router, and we're basically making a router-powered shooting board.

It works great, so let's go ahead and get started.

What we have here is a piece of 1/2-inch Baltic birch plywood.

We have a piece of solid wood that I'm gonna call the backstop, a piece of T-track, and a filler block.

First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna glue and nail the backstop in place.

Now, to hold this in place while the glue dries, you can, of course, use clamps.

I'm gonna go ahead and pin it with this cordless pinner.

There we go.

Fast and easy.

Next up, I'm going to go ahead and put on the T-track.

I'm gonna mark my hole locations for the screws.

Then I want to go and predrill.

With our backstop and our T-track in place, now I'm going to go ahead and glue a filler block on the end here to complete this section.

This eventually will get cut in a miter, but not yet.

That'll happen when we go ahead and true everything up and get ready to actually begin to use our miter trimmer.

So I'm gonna put a little glue on the block.

And I'm gonna go ahead and use my pinner.

Hold that in place.

The next component that we need to work on is the base, which will guide the router across the miter joint.

The router that I'm going to use is a palm router because it's a nice, convenient, easy-to-use size.

What we have here is a base on which the router will ride, a fence... ...and we're then going to add this guide block, which fits underneath, and that'll help adjust the router fence as we tweak it to that just-right angle for your miters.

First thing I need to do is to go ahead and glue and nail the router fence in place.

With that done, I've got a couple of holes that need to be drilled.

This one I have already marked.

That's for a carriage bolt on which this fence will pivot as we adjust the appropriate angle.

The other holes that I need to lay out and drill are for this piece, and this is an adjustment block, and it's going to help set that swing of the fence.

The block itself is going to be underneath the base.

The inside face of the adjustment block lines up with the face of our router fence.

So I know where to drill the holes, I'm gonna go ahead and just set it up top here and lightly outline its final position underneath.

With that done, it's pretty -- pretty easy to go ahead and lay out some locations within the shape for our screws.

There we go.

So let's head over to the drill press.

I'm gonna drill a 5/16 hole for the bolt, and I'm gonna go ahead and drill some clearance holes and countersinks for some number-8 screws here.

Well, over the drill press, we went ahead and took care of the hole for the bolt and its countersink that'll allow our router base to pivot.

We also drilled these countersunk holes to attach this adjustment block.

So I'm gonna go ahead and do that now.

Now I marked and drilled some pilot holes since we're going into hard maple.

And a little glue.

Want to make sure everything is nice and square before I sink my screws, and I think we're good to go.

All right, there's our adjustment block in place.

So what's next?

Well, we're going to go ahead and do some assembly work, getting our router base attached to the primary base of our jig.

Then to wrap things up, we're gonna work on a mechanism which allows you to set those incremental, little tweaks to get that perfect miter fit.

Well, I've started doing a little assembly work.

What I've done is to bolt the router base to our jig base with a 5/16-inch carriage bolt.

And as you can see, that allows the router base to pivot.

And that's gonna allow us to make the fine adjustments to get that perfect miter that we want.

Another thing I've done is to add this rail here.

This rail helps to support that base of the router, keep it from tipping forward.

The first thing I'm going to do is take off one of these knobs... ...and the washer, and I'll slip our flip stop in between.

But the washer and the knob back in place.

And I'm gonna take the whole assembly of the threaded rod, knobs, washers, and then we'll put it into the kerf that we created earlier in the adjustment block like so.

So this stop is gonna be able to flip up when we don't need it and flip down when we do.

Want to make sure that it's got plenty of clearance.

And that looks like a pretty good spot right there.

These small blocks of wood capture the ends... ...of the 5/16 rod like so.

So what I need to do now is glue and screw these in place.

But before I do that, I want to take my try square and make sure that my router base is pretty close to 45 degrees, which it is.

So let me go ahead and glue and screw these in place now.

When screwing the second block in place, I want to make sure that everything is very snug, so I'm gonna push in towards the rod.

Next thing I need to do is I'm going to go ahead and place a screw in the end of the stop block.

The screw doesn't have to go in very far because we want to make sure that it's adjustable.

And with my stop down, I'll go ahead and butt the screw loosely against it and go ahead and sink two screws in to hold the stop block in place.

Well, this completes the assembly of the router miter trimmer.

And now Logan's gonna show you how to use it.

On its surface, a miter is a simple joint.

You're simply cutting a piece of stock at a certain angle to match up to another piece of stock.

However, getting a perfect fit on something like a 45-degree miter is where the real trick comes in.

Dialing that in for a perfect fit can kind of be finicky.

But luckily, we have this router miter-trimming jig that Chris built.

This makes it really easy to dial in your angles for a perfect fit.

Let me show you how it works.

So on the back side here, we have a T-track, and that's what our stock registers against.

And the stock then slides through.

This fence and underneath it and the stock's locked down with these hold downs.

Let's just go and slide those in the place.

And the stock gets clamped down.

Now, here's the real cool part.

We have a fence up here, and that's where our router is gonna ride along.

What makes this really nice is that it's adjustable.

This entire fence assembly pivots off of one carriage built back here.

And to adjust it, we have this thread rod with a pair of knobs up here, so we can just back those off.

And then we can use one of the thread knobs to push the fence and pivot it off that carriage bolt.

That means you have really, really fine adjustment as you're dialing in your miters.

Once you have it set where you think it needs to be, you simply take those knobs and tighten them both down.

And that locks that fence in place.

And then once you do find that perfect fit for whatever angle you're going for, you can set this screw as a positive stop.

That way, you can always find that exact angle simply by adjusting the fence to where the aluminum contacts that screw.

But once everything's locked in place, you can go ahead and make a test cut.

So we'll go ahead and do that.

I'm gonna ride this router right along the fence, and I'm gonna make that cut.

Then we'll measure it and make any adjustments that are necessary.

So there we go.

After one test cut, I was able to dial that in, and that is a pretty perfect fit -- a Chris Fitch fit, if I may say so.

So now what we have to do, after we have it set up, is we have to set this positive stop.

And to do that, we're gonna flip up this piece of aluminum, and we'll just back out this screw it just a little bit until it's contacting that stop.

Right there.

Now this jig is set up for consistent, perfect 45-degree cuts every time.

It's a simple jig, but I think you'll find it invaluable in your shop.

The router jig that I'm gonna show you how to make is for using a small router to create tenons on the end of pieces.

Now, originally, it was designed for cutting tenons on long pieces, but frankly, it works really well on just about any size workpiece.

And with just a small investment of time and some common shop materials, you'll make something that you're gonna turn to quite often.

Now, there's really two components here that we're working with.

There's a base assembly and then a fence-and-stop system.

We're gonna get started on the base.

Now, this is gonna be two parts, because you'll root each tenon in two operations -- one for the wide face of the tenon, and then another for the narrow edge or end or shoulders of the tenon.

Now, the top piece is pretty simple.

It's just a rectangle of plywood.

The side piece, which is joined at a right angle to the top, is a little bit more involved.

It has a pair of tracks in it that will hold a workpiece support.

And here's how we're gonna make those tracks.

I took the side piece over to the table saw, installed a 1/2-inch-wide dado blade, and cut to dados in the face of it.

That's gonna be the wide part of this T-slot.

And over the top of this, we're gonna just glue on a piece of 1/4-inch hardboard.

Can slide that out of the way.

There's a lot of glue surface here, so you'll have a good, strong bond.

Once the glue is dry here, we're gonna take this back over to the table saw.

Then with a 1/4-inch dado blade, we're gonna cut another narrow set of dados right across and centered on those wider sets, and that's gonna form our T-shaped slot.

What's important here is that, when you join them, that they're at a 90-degree angle.

As you can see, this could be a little bit of fumbling around.

So what I'm going to do instead... ...is use a set of clamping squares.

They're just aluminum squares with holes in it that allow me to clamp the two parts together.

The next pieces to add to our router jig are gonna be anchor points for the fence-and-stop system.

Now one of those pieces is called a guide block, and it has a long slot in the end of it for the stops.

Now, just like the tracks in the side of the jig, this one's gonna be T-shaped, but it doesn't go all the way through.

So I'm gonna do it here at the router table.

Now, because the guide block is gonna be pretty short overall, I'm working with an extra-long piece.

That way, I can keep my fingers well away from the bit as I'm working.

Here's how this works.

I have a 1/2-inch straight bit in the router, and I'm gonna rout a shallow groove down part of the length of this blank.

After routing the shallow groove with the 1/2-inch bit, I'm gonna replace it for a 1/4-inch bit and complete the through slot in the top, just like I did before.

After the guide block, the other two pieces that we need to make that attach to the top of our jig are a cleat and an edge guide.

Now, these are just narrow pieces of plywood, but you'll have to do something first.

Over at the drill press, we're gonna drill counterbored holes through each of these pieces.

You could see there's a counterbore on both faces -- one of them is shallow for the head of our bolt.

The other one is deep enough to accept a hex nut so that it's flush or below the surface.

What's important here is that these two posts are gonna be the anchor point for our fence, and so we want those in line with each other as well as square to the reference face of our jig.

The fence for our jig is a two-part assembly.

We have a wide hardboard base and a plywood fence.

There's gonna be two slots in here that will fit over the posts that are on the jig.

To create those, I'm gonna do that here at the router table.

I've drilled out the end holes, and I can use that to set up the bit and the fence.

What I'll do is just turn on the bit, lower the fence over the spinning bit, rout until I hear it pass into the stop hole, then repeat for the other slot.

I'll flip the piece over and do the same thing, and I'll need to just raise the bit slightly and complete the slots.

The stop system on our tenoning jig controls the length of the tenon on the parts that we're working with.

But we're starting with a wide, extra-long blank, kind of like we did with some of the other parts.

I'm gonna cut a rabbit on the end and then a wide dado in the middle before cutting it to length and then cutting off the two separate pieces.

All right, it's time for the final assembly.

We have the fence that slides on the top of the base.

You can see that it adjusts side to side.

Now, what I did do is use the router and bit I'm gonna use with this jig to trim the front edge of this platform that's going to help in aligning the workpiece.

Next up is the fence, or the workpiece support that goes on the bottom, and that slides in those T-tracks, and then we can lock those down with knobs.

Now, the fence itself gets attached with knobs as well.

And then the final piece of the puzzle here is the stop that we just made.

And that fits over the top of that guide block.

Another large washer.

And you can see how that can slide back and forth to set the length of our tenon.

So I think we're ready to hand this over to Logan to show us how to get the most out of this jig.

So now that Phil's done building are tenoning jig, we can go ahead and put it to use.

Now I have added a couple blocks here.

The first are a pair of guide blocks, and those are on the back side of the fence.

And those are really just there to help keep this fence surface square along the fence that our workpiece rides up against.

Another thing we added is a block on the bottom side of the fence.

This is just a block to back up the cut.

But first, let's talk about some of the adjustments on here.

We have a couple of things we need to set to make a tenon.

The first is we need to set the tenon length.

And to do that, we use this fence here.

So we want to make a tenon that's an inch.

We'll go ahead and set this stop for 1 inch and tighten it down.

Now, that sets the length of our tenon.

Now we can load up our workpiece.

So we're gonna cut a tenon on this piece of walnut.

We simply lift this guy up... ...and slide our workpiece underneath, and we run it until it contacts that stop.

We tighten down those knobs, and that clamps our workpiece in place.

Now, the only thing we have left to set is how thick we want our tenon.

And we do that by setting the depth on the router.

So we'll just go ahead and slip that guy in place, check our bit depth, and make any adjustments if they're necessary.

There we go.

Now we're pretty much ready to rout.

The routing process here is pretty straightforward.

We're gonna start with the router behind the workpiece, and we're gonna turn it on.

And then we'll go ahead and pull that router through the workpiece, creating the first edge of the tenon, to find the tenon shoulder.

Then we'll simply loosen these knobs, slide the workpiece back a little bit, and then repeat that entire process until we cut the tenon.

Then we'll flip the workpiece over, do the same on the other face.

So there we go.

After we make passes on both sides, we've set the thickness of our tenon.

Now we need to go ahead and address the edges.

And to do that, we're gonna flip over and use this front fence.

So the first thing we're gonna do is slide this fence out, and that's gonna move this backer block out, so it's gonna be on the outside of our workpiece.

And then we're gonna go ahead and put our piece in, and we're gonna raise this fence.

There we go.

And we'll lock those in place.

And now we slide this fence back up against the workpiece, and that backer block is going to clamp that workpiece up against the face of the jig.

There we are.

Now, it's a simple matter of doing the same process, just on the edge of the tenon.

So your handheld router and this jig leaves you with really smooth tenons.

They just require a little bit of cleanup to be the perfect fit for your project.

The two projects that we featured in today's episode, the tenon-making jig and the miter trimmer, checks a lot of boxes for having a good time in your workshop.

First, they solve some real problems that you often find in a workshop -- cutting accurate tenons, making miters that fit tightly.

The other thing that I like is that these are a little bit mechanical.

There's some machine work and some settings and adjustments that you can make to dial them in.

And it's just kind of fun to be able to make something like this and then put it to use on an actual project.

Now, if you'd like to make one or both of these jigs, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

You'll also find plans for other great furniture projects and shop projects.

There's videos and ideas that'll keep you busy in your shop, and then we'll gather right back here in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪