Tried using a circular saw jig for drawer sides and messed up a whole sheet of plywood

I was working on a kitchen job in Mesa last week and tried to save time by building a quick jig for cutting drawer sides on my circular saw. The jig slipped halfway through the cut and ruined a $90 sheet of Baltic birch before I even got two pieces cut. Anybody got a go-to method for keeping jigs locked down tight on the first pass?

3 comments

3 Comments

quinncoleman17d ago

Feel your pain man. Tried a similar thing with a router jig for dadoes and watched the whole thing shift on me, ruined a sheet of maple ply. What works for me now is clamping a straightedge right to the jig's fence line and also putting a strip of that anti-slip rubber shelf liner under the jig base. The rubber liner is cheap at the hardware store and it keeps that thing planted like it's glued down.

quinncoleman17d ago

Exactly what I ended up doing. I went to the hardware store and grabbed a roll of that rubber shelf liner for like 3 bucks. Cut a strip the same size as my jig base and it's night and day difference. No more creeping while the router is running. I also started using two quick clamps on the fence instead of one, one at each end, and that alone stopped most of the shifting. Maple ply is too expensive to learn that lesson twice.

danielm8017d agoMost Upvoted

Stop blaming the jig and start blaming your setup. Clamps and a non-slip base would have fixed this before you even pulled the trigger.