The Benchmaker's Apprentice: Preparing the Parallel Guide

Here we are again, The Benchmaker's Apprentice. This time, I have my parallel guide ready to be drilled. I found the best way to do this is with a divider. Once I had drawn a nice square line across the board in the appropriate place, I simply take my divider and walk down the board, marking each interval for a place to drill. Then I just repeat the process on each 3 layers of holes. It's a flawless technique, and I can't claim it's my idea, unfortunately.

And here we have a complete set of marks for drilling. Now off to the drill press.

I'm not going to drill through on these because I don't want any blow-out on the other side.

I set my depth stop so that the brad-point bit just pokes through the other side. From here I can flip the board over and finish the drilling with blow-out being minimal.



Now I counter-sink the holes so that the guide will look nicer, but this also helps the pin insert easier; so when you're really tired and have to finish a project really fast, you won't have to deal with all that aiming to get the pin in the hole.


Now I am lining up the parallel for the mortise and tenon.

And routing...

After I clean that up, we'll have a nice mortise.

Now just to get that tenon done.

A nice fit is always...nice.


Just finishing up the end of the guide.

Finish.