Woodrat

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I need to cut fine dovetails for small jewellery boxes and a machinists chest I have been planning to make for ages so need a fully adjustable dovetail cutting jig for fine dovetails - both through and stopped. Having looked about most seem to use set width templates and guide bushes, but then I came across the woodrat. This looks a nice piece of kit with a fully adjustable facility and the ability to make a series of other joints also Does anyone have any experience of using one or recommendations of other more suitable jigs?

I have ordered the glossy video from the woodrat website but wanted a hands on opinion as well as a totally biased salesman's one :wink:

Any thoughts gratefully recieved. Love the site by the way, very useful!

Steve.

 

[Charley]

Hi Steve,

You might be best asking this question in http://groups.msn.com/ukwoodworking as there are loads of happy woodrat owners there.

If your planning to do a lot of dovetails I would recommend you buy the Leigh jig. This jig has to be the king of dovetail jigs and is the easiest/quickest to set up by far.

I got one for christmas and am so happy with it: -

http://www.rutlands.co.uk/cgi-bin/psPro ... 0|user||4|

 

[Anonymous]

I have both the Woodrat and Leigh jig.
Although I really like the Woodrat's ability to move the workpiece by turning a handle, my woodrat is now gathering dust, but still gets used for comb joint work.
I find the Leigh jig much better suited to dovetails.
It depends on if you want a machine only for dovetails, or something that can do more.
If it's just dovetails then I'd go for the Leigh.

Best of luck, Peter

 

[Anonymous]

The Rats are not as intuitive to use as the template based jigs, it does offer a much finer dovetail if the HSS bits are used though. For mortising and such it is quite intuitive and easy to use. I think the Rat would be a good choice for all-round use, a lot of bang for the crown (so to speak). To get the full capability from the system though you may need to build a few jigs and such. I actually think you get 90% or more of this capability with the LittleRat.

I have more Rat info on my site if you wish to see.

PMB
http://benchmark.20m.com