DELTA 34-184 Tenoning Jig

I bought this tool because it was a Top Tool in a Wood Magazine review and I have not been disappointed. This was my first project with mortis and tenon joints and this jig made them easy. I would buy it again.Assembly and set up are not trivial, however. The unpainted machined surfaces come coated with a preservative. The manual says to remove it with a rag moistened with kerosene. There is no way that would work. I cleaned it outside where I could flood it with kerosene and then wipe it off. The preservative is everywhere; the base comes partially assembled, but I had to disassemble it to get at all the preservative.A couple of other reviews say that the jig did not fit their saw; one talks about the washers on the miter bar. The miter bar comes with washers mounted on the ends of the miter bar to fit "T" slot miter slots. The manual says to remove these washers if your saw does not have a "T" slot. My saw has a "T" slot, but the jig still would not fit. The space between the washer and the miter bar is too small to fit so I removed the washers (no grinding involved as mentioned in the other review, just a screw through each washer). It should be possible to shim the washers to fit but I did not bother.The miter bar is adjusted to fit your slot by turning three set screws. These screws have a spot of thread lock on them so they do not move after adjustment, but this also makes them hard to adjust. Two of the three did turn although they were tight. The third would not hardly move. The end of the included hex key wrench rounded before it would turn. I ground the wrench flat on the end and finally got the screw to move. Other reviews talk about poor quality screws; I did not see that; the wrench rounded over before the hex socket in the screw failed.The backstop is hard to adjust to a right angle with the table. Setting it is easy, but tightening the lock knob (lever) causes it to move.Using the jig is a breeze. The continuously adjustable clamp arm makes it easy to tightly clamp just about any size stock. The fine adjustment of the cut location is really fine, a full turn for 1/16" movement, however, there is a lot of backlash in this adjustment, probably 1/2 turn.I like the position of the two handles, fore and aft; they seem perfectly positioned to make the cut.One other review talked about problems after 50-60 tenons; I have only made 12, so something may go wrong later. So far I am satisfied.

My jig arrived packed in grease (I get it, but it is still annoying. I live in the pacific northwest. If its going to rust in shipping, its probably going to rust in the winter unless I heat my shop to 60 degrees all the time.)After assembly, I realized that Delta had machined the holes off of parallel and that I would need to re-manufacture the base plate to get it to run parallel with the blade. Otherwise all of my tenons would be off by a 1/32 to 1/16 depending on the width of the tenon. Not that big of a deal unless you wanted a jig to help you with accuracy. :)I also had issues with tightening down the screws on the jig. They were not very strong and one partially stripped out. I do not tighten things excessively tight as a rule, and I was not in this case either. Just poor quality or undersized screws.My table saw, a Grizzly G0691 Left tilt, has a T-slot 6 inches from the blade. This jig does not reach to 6 inches, leaving the measuring gauge useful only in relative measures (ie. if I add 1/4" to each value then it is accurate.)So disappointed in manufacturing, disappointed in adaptability, and disappointed in the screws that it was made from. Replaced it with a Grizzly tenoning jig. The Grizzly took a couple of days to get here, but it assembled and worked (except it has the same issue with measures.) Amazon did a great job with the return as always.

I bought this jig to replace a homemade jig that I have been using. Out of the box the tool looked to be top quality. During assembly and setup I encoutered a couple of problems. First, during conversion to a left tilting arbor I found that the metric "Button Head Screws" that attach the miter guide to the base were made of soft inferior quality metal. I had to cut the screws out and replace with quality screws. Second, the rear adjustment for eliminating side-to-side play (slop) in the miter guide would not eliminate the side to side movement in the miter guide. This adjustment device also had to abe replaced. On the bright side, the jig works beautifully for cutting accurate tenons.Bobby ParrisEngineer turned Woodworker

Was a little bit apprehensive about buying. Read some of the reviews. But was willing to work with it. When it arrived it was a lot better than I expected. Cleaned off the packing grease. Threw it on a table saw did some adjusting. It worked fine. I like it. I thought it was worth the money. Simple to use