I while back my buddy asked me if I could help him make a stair tread jig for a finishing job he had going, I’ll be honest I didn’t even know what that was so I took to google to figure it out before committing…… Wait thats not true, I totally committed to the project before I even knew what it was that I was supposed to build. Fortunately Google sent me off in the right direction and in a short time I had a basic design worked out in Sketchup, well actually 2 basic designs. Design A where the main body of the jig is dovetailed to stay together without any fasteners and design B exactly the same but with a dado in place of the dovetail Below are images from Design A (Dovetail) It appears I somehow deleted the Sketchup file for design B which is Ironic because that is the file that the final project was built off.

Once the design was settled I started off I used 1 x 2 inch maple stock and made the whole thing out of one piece. After cutting the outside base piece to width I hollowed out the Dado using a 3/4 inch dado bit on my router table,

Next I cut the two inside Pieces to fit and routed the groove for the 1/4 20 carriage bolts and knobs to go.

As you can see in the photo above I have also cut the end pieces as well as cut the grooves for the carriage bolts recessed so the head of the both is completely countersunk.

Now you can see the 5 pieces before I stained them with the Danish Oil, in hindsight I would not use this again because it doesn’t really Harden completely, next time I build one of these I will use Wipe On Poly, I prefer the finish of that and it dries to a hard finish.