Table saw bow-ties (dutchman keys)

After trying my hand at cutting bow ties on the band saw and being disappointed by the lack of precision and the need to clean up the cut I tried my hand at making a jig for the table saw.

The substrate is a piece of oak I had lying around, roughly 20 inches long by 6" wide. Also in the scrap bin, a piece of oak 3/4" wide by 1/2" thick by about 25 inches long. When finished, the assembly was clamped into my cross cut sled.



I started by marking a square line across the width of the oak board about 3 inches from one end which represented the saw kerf, then using a bevel gauge I marked out the angle I wanted for the bow tie. Once the lines were in place I cut the thin oak strips to size and glued and tagged them in with a pin nailer. This jig was set up to cut a 3" bow tie at roughly a 1:8 angle.

Using it was pretty simple but did require a few steps. Insert your stock (cut to final width and thickness, in my case 1.5 inches wide and 3/4" thick), make the first cut, then flip the face over and make the second cut.




Then you have to cross cut the piece to final length. I hadnt considered this prior to starting and didnt want to unclamp the jig so I put another strip of the 1/2" oak along the bottom of the jig (flush with the base of my cross cut sled) and used it to make the cross cuts. If I had thought of this before hand I would have made it a bit more stable but it did a great job anyway.


To finish the bow tie I used double sided tape to stick it in place and made the final two cuts. I would point out that I traced the outline of the stock on the jig prior to making any cuts so you have a reference for the final pass. Because the blade enters at the exact corner of the stock, the final cut is missing the blade thickness and cant rest down in the corner like the first three.


This jig took about 20 minutes to think up and build, and although its no Mathias Wendell creation, it got the job done just fine without any clean up afterward.