Sliding Fence Box Joint Jig On Bosch 1181 Router Table
Posted by: Kevin in DIY, Router Jigs, Routers Add commentsI know I haven’t posted anything since ordering my new router table, that’s mainly because I’ve been busy in the shop building things and testing my new equipment. Here are quite a few shots of the Sliding Fence I built for the new table. It works great for cutting box joints, but could also be used to cut dovetails, tenons, through or stopped dados and groves in stock less than 14″ wide if you provided proper support for the outfeed side and probably quite a few other uses I haven’t thought of yet.
I ended up using select pine to build it since that’s what I had laying around. I would recommend hard wood or straight 3/4″ ply should work as well. Another reason I used the select pine was that was all I had ripped to the dimensions I needed as I was minus a table saw at the time of putting this together and cut everything on the mitre saw. Yes, the Skil tablesaw has been replaced with the Bosch 4000-09 which is awesome. More about it later, but if you click on the above image gallery you can see a few shots of it put together. The saw rocks! It’s so smooth compared to the Skil. I can actually start the saw with my work piece aligned and it does not budge. 
As for the sled plan measured drawing if anyone wants to build it, it’s pretty straight forward. If you’re like me you could look at the images and make your own based of the dimensions of your table. The biggest thing is making sure it’s square to the table.
You can use clamps to hold it together for adjustability and I recommend this before you decide to screw or glue it all together, especially the fence portion. You may want to change things around a bit depending on how you work and what you’re routing.
I set mine up to cut box joints and after routing a few test pieces I decided that I would need to reinforce the fence with some scrap pieces of 2×4’s I had laying around. I glued the reinforcing block to the flat board in back and then pre-drilled countersunk pilot holes on the face and secured the fence to the block after the glue had set for a day. You can see the clamp up was a little precarious but totally achievable.
After using the jig for a bit I decided to go ahead and route some slots so I could adjust the fence and use other sacrificial fences instead of building another sliding apparatus for each jig. I also made the stop block adjustable as well. Here is a shot before I put everything together but you can get the general idea.
With just a little bit of practice I was able to cut this box joint that fit together even before reinforcing the fence.
Now I have a set up that is straightforward, simple to use, keeps my hands off the table and away from the bit and offers repeatable accuracy for a multitude of cuts. This is the first jig I’ve built for the table and I would recommend it as anyones’ first table jig. You will learn alot in building one and watching your craftsmanship improve will give you encouragement to keep striving for better accuracy!