Often when you are working in the shop, you need to create some sort of apparatus or “jig” to control the item while you are cutting, routing, drilling or generally working on the item. It helps to make the work more accurate and/or safer. Oftentimes a woodworker will have a host of jigs in their shop, hanging from the rafters or against the wall.
In working on the jewelry case, I’ve had to route dados in the back of the case, so I created an “L” fence for the table saw. This lets me cut the dados or channels in the pieces while allowing the wood to have room against a fence. It is often when wood gets bound up against the fence that it catches and shoots back – called “kickback.” This is the accident that happens most often on a tables aw, much more prevalent than a cut.
The other thing I need to work on was to cut joinery in the edge of pieces of in a controlled manner. For that you can purchase a tenoning jig for several hundred $. Instead, I built one with about $35 of plywood and $15 of clamps. It allows me to safely cut the joinery in a repeatable, accurate way.
The work on the chest continues, more in the future.