I’m new to the kitchen fitting game. It’s. Le come to worktops and I’ve been watching my trainer loads. And videos. I keep practicing at home. I till it’s my turn on site. But I can never seem to get the joint right Any help? With the female it’s always right! (Hard to get female wrong) But when I do the male it never seems to line up bang on how I like it too. And I feel I’m doing all the parts right Any help. Any tips? What do you all sugguest
What jig are you using? Talk us through the process on male cut. Your got the cutter working against itself?
Unika jig, cut female cut. Put worktop over the joint with and offcut of worktop on the other side. Use a pencil underneath to mark the joint. Set back 7mm and put jig on that line and then cut with router
Never been a fan of marking one joint with other. What happens if your marking on the face which router shouldn't be running on. With the male cut you realise that cutter is spinning clockwise and you should be pushing into the cut? Also are you using the waste side of the big till the final cut?
That’s properly where I’m going wrong then Do you have any tips? What way would you do the joint. So I know and can try your method Thanks for this
I'm in Leicester too mate you can come help me with my next one! Always make sure you're using a router against itself. The slot on the jig is a few mm wider than collet. Use waste side until final full depth pass
You might be using the wrong offset as well. Assuming that you're using a 12.7mm cutter in a 30mm bush the offset is half the difference between the two diameters which is 8.65mm. I'm not accurate enough for that so I mark 9mm. Edit: As Jimoz says - work along the waste edge of the jig until the final pass but watch that you don't press down too hard on the jig as you pull towards yourself or you might bend the jig very slightly which means that you undercut the worktop. Depending on whether you're cutting from the top or bottom, it may force your joint open.
What do you mean waste side? As in pushing the guide bush to 1 side then the other side on final pass I’m at work TMZ. I can do evening and weekends
if hes marked the jig at 7mm then wouldn't that just make the length of the male worktop longer by 2mm?
Hmmm.... That's a good point and it would obviously be the case if it were a straight line across but does it affect the mitre because you're changing the shape of the angle? I don't know. The jigs are manufactured to work to those offsets and to use 7mm would be different. I sense some experiments coming next time I've got a router and jig handy...
The angle isn't changing. If the jig was placed on the cut line, so lets say a offset of 0mm. Then the overall length of the worktop is 9mm bigger than you expected. The angle would change if the front offset was different to the back.
I said the shape of the angle when it would have been better to say shape of the mitre. The pivot point would be different for the male and female if you cut them with different offsets. Using your example of a 0mm offset, the cutter would only start to engage when it was part way around the mitre giving a completely different shape to the male. What offset do you use?
I scribe the underside of the male, then mark back 9mm on the straight edge of the cut at the front and back. The male mitre starts in the same position every time thanks to the front pin on the jig. The front pin touches the post formed edge, then the jig is lined up with the front and back lines, which are 9mm back from the cut line. The pivot point is the front pin.
If you scribed the male, then marked back 100mm, you would still end up with the same angle as the female thanks to the front pin. The worktop would then end up short in length by 91mm
There is a tommey's trade secret video on youtube that goes through scribing one of the joints off the other. He marks the width of the worktop on the worktop as a part of getting it correct. Having done this myself for the first time I found it's best to cut the female a bit too long and correct that later. All that matters on the scribe is the angle of the line. The peg sets where the rad will be. Other points Have a close look at the cutter after each side of a joint is cut. Looks like I would have been better off using a fresh cutter after each complete joint. All of the shallowish cuts to full depth can clog up the tip of the cutter. I had to figure out how to align the jig again and take a bit off to correct it. Pull the router up against the jig on all cuts to full depth and thentake a full depth cut pushing instead. A strip of worktop may be needed to support the jig to prevent it tilting. Dam things will if they can. To much error in the angle of the wall can mess things up at some point but scribing one side of the joint can take up a lot. Have to be very careful aligning the jig to a scribe. My jig had chamfers on both sided of the slot making that tricky. I held a safety razor blade against the flat on the edge to align to the scribe.. That way I managed to about a mm or so error in the angle when the 2 parts were together over about 2m. Last but not least you may find yourself having to trim the back to match the walls - just to add to the fun. I had to do a bit of that before doing any jointing. Part down to using a corner cabinet and part down to the walls. Corner units unlike walls are square. You might find this thread useful especially towards the end https://community.screwfix.com/thre...ions-if-walls-out-of-square-incorrect.209523/ John -
Trend make a great offset marking guide, definately pick one up to help, as others have said, 7mm should be 9mm, the guide takes out the guess work
Really sorry but I've only just seen your question. No. I would help if I could. Hope you find someone.