# Mortise Jig dilemma



## mengtian (Nov 8, 2012)

My loving wife knew that I was looking at things I want for Christmas and she came upon a few notes I took for mortise and tenon jigs. Anyway, short story short, my wife ordered this for me (suppose to be a surprise)
870 - EZ PRO™ MORTISE AND TENON JIG
http://www.generaltools.com/870--EZ-PRO-MORTISE-AND-TENON-JIG_p_1295.html

So, is it any good (I am a beginner). I was not planning on getting one for a few months and was not even sure if I was gettiing one.

Do I politley tell her it was not what I wanted or is it decent to get me started?

OH, I did a search and coould not find a review on this forum..if there is I apologize


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## Dave Paine (May 30, 2012)

This reminds me why I try to tell my wife not to purchase tools for me since she is not able to understand good from bad.

One thread.
http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f24/anybody-use-general-tools-870-e-z-pro-mortise-tenon-jig-42472/

Another thread.
http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f27/modifying-general-mortise-tenon-jig-41207/

The weakness appears to be the clamping mechanism.


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## mengtian (Nov 8, 2012)

Dave Paine said:


> This reminds me why I try to tell my wife not to purchase tools for me since she is not able to understand good from bad.
> 
> One thread.
> http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f24/anybody-use-general-tools-870-e-z-pro-mortise-tenon-jig-42472/
> ...


Thanks. I don't know why I have problems with the search on this forum:blink: Anyways, I will see what I can do with it. If anything it will give me some experience and maybe I can make the thing better.

And yeah, I always tell my wife to not get me anything ...I will shop myself


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## Dave Paine (May 30, 2012)

mengtian said:


> I don't know why I have problems with the search on this forum:blink:


The forum search uses keywords which default to being an EXACT match. I think this is a bad design. Most searches use the keyword as inclusion. I have not found a way to change this behaviour.

So if you were looking for EZ something, the two thread's I found would not show up, since they have titles of "E Z".

I use the forum search a lot, but it is not as easy as it could be. I also note that the search decides which of my keywords to use and it discards others. Very frustrating.


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## One Ozark American (Jan 9, 2008)

I used one to make mortise and tenons for storm windows I built. Vertical alignment for cutting on the ends of stock is a problem. You will need some sort of jig to keep the stock vertical. Also, the metal fingers used to locate the height of stock are pretty useless. I just made a wooden thingy to sit on top of the jig and project through the holes to consistently locate to the correct height. Also, depending on the size of the tenons you cut, it may take multiple passes with different settings to remove all the material on the ends. Kind of hard to describe that one but you'll find out. If I ever use mine again, I'm not going to mess with making tenons. I"ll just make matching mortises and use lose tenons.


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