Customer Reviews

Ingenious Jigs & Shop Accessories (Essentials of Woodworking)

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We woodworkers all build jigs, you know those shop built attachments that hopefully allow a tool to function better than it did out of the box! If you're like me you use them and store them in the rafters. For surely they will come in handy again!? Unfortunately most of them never get used again and end up collecting dust until you finally throw them out. For this reason I have never been a big fan of jig books which to my mind just help add to the clutter.

However, in this new book from The Taunton Press we are finally treated to a selection of jigs and accessories that will undoubtedly be useful over and over again. The authors of the jigs presented are all experienced woodworkers who clearly gave some thought to the longevity and usefulness of these accessories.

The first chapter discusses materials used to build jigs including various plastics. Chap 2 shows benches and bench fixtures. The rest of the chapters are divided according to the type of tool the jigs or accessories are designed to work with, routers, tablesaws, etc. There is also an overview of some commercially available router tables.

Some of the jigs are a bit complex, but even if you don't build exactly what is shown, the ideas for expanding the usefulness of a particular tool are really innovative and should get your own creative juices flowing! It would be a rare woodworker who wouldn't find at least several useful ideas in this book.

It would be nice if tool designers gave more thought to how we woodworkers use their tools and incorporated more versatility directly into their tools, but until then, this book offers an overview of well designed jigs and accessories to fill the gap.

I was somewhat disappointed with this book. It does have a lot of information and pictures and does describe how to use the jigs. However, there are very few actual detail drawings of the jigs. There is usually a general drawing, but that is about it. I suppose if you are an experienced wood worker, then that may be all you need. But for the beginner, there is not enough detail information to build many of the jigs or accessories. If you are looking for router jigs and tools, I highly recommend "Router Magic" by Bill Hylton. Router Magic is an excellent book with lots of detail drawings and bill of materials.

Nice photos and descriptions. The book is lacking any detailed information on building any of the devices in the book. There are no material lists or detailed drawings.

Although interesting, my advice is to get Sandor's book instead. I have both, and I use Sandor's more often...not just for his jigs, but for ideas on designing my own.

Most of the jigs represented in this book are tedious and time consuming to build and require a lot custom made or hard to find metal parts. Additionally, the plans are not clearly and consistently presented. Only the table saw sled is easy enough to produce in your shop with materials at hand. The book is poorly organized - i.e., there is a section on safe jigs with protective covers that should be supplementary to the appropriate jig - not a confusing separate section that doesn't give specifics like dimensions.

I can't recommend this book to beginners because it's to difficult to obtain materials and it's not clearly written. I also can't recommend this book to pros because they would find it and unorganized and serious waste of valuable shop time as all the projects could be done as well - with easier to obtain parts and better written schematics.