Keller 1500 Journeyman Dovetail Jig

David Keller's remarkable dovetail templates make production of perfectly fitted through dovetails almost as easy as nailing joints together. With minimal set-up and just a few minutes' practice, you'll have the dovetail jig calibrated and basic technique fully under control; thereafter you'll be able to crank out uniformly spaced through dovetails at the drop of a hat.
One of the features that makes the Keller dovetail jigs so easy to use is their bearing-guided carbide bits, designed to track directly against the template fingers. Router-mounted template guides aren't required, so you don't have to alter your router base or fiddle with installing bits through a guide turret. A pair of bits, dovetail and straight, is provided with each jig.

Keller Model 1500 is 15" wide; maximum stock width for one-pass dovetailing is 12". The template has no end stops, so once you've dovetailed the first 12" of a wide workpiece you can unclamp the jig and slide it sideways far enough to do another 11" and you can repeat the process all the way across a 36" carcase corner, an 18" blanket chest, or a 30" tool cabinet. Precision realignment is a snap.
Stock thickness with the jig's standard bits ranges from 3/4" to a practical minimum of 7/16". An optional pair of smaller bits handles delicate stock from 3/8" down to a mere 1/8" thick. With its 1-1/8" fixed finger spacing, Keller Journeyman 1500 works best with stock cut to some multiple of that width. Custom joint design requires moving the jig for each tail variation, scribing pin layout from the tail piece, then aligning the jig for each custom pin position. Standard equipment includes a CNC-milled solid phenolic template and a matched set of 1/4"-shank bearing-piloted bits, a 7° 7/16" dovetail and a 5/8" straight.
Journeyman 1500 can produce box joints as well as dovetails, using an optional bearing-guided straight bit to cut 9/16" fingers in stock up to 3/4" thick. If you bullnose the ends of both workpieces before cutting the box joint, you can make them into tight-fitting wooden hinges, too.

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