Can This Jig Really Simplify Hip Roof Joinery?

This video is for all the guys that actually wanted to try timber framing, but were intimidated by the process, the chisels, the this and this join me and that join me. If you're looking to make a repeat, a repeatable easy joint, we've developed a jig that's going to make you make dovetail pockets, pockets, skewed pocket rafters. And now we just finished our first pocketed dovetail. So now you have the super strength that you want to need, and you can turn anybody at this point can be. You're going to tell me that that's not a strong joint. Okay. You use this jig. You're going to turn yourself from a newbie to a pro overnight. Get your products finished. Check it out. Worth the watch. This video is for all my let's call you newbie timber framers that have never timber framed anything in your life. And you actually want to make repeatable joints easy, perfect each time. Now I know we've developed and we've overdeveloped the dovetail jig. I did not come up with the idea to several companies that make a dovetail jig that you can actually make dovetail pockets from. Now, what we did is we took that idea and I used the standard dovetail jig for years. Now we've worked for months, months, I want to say, and months at trying to revamp this jig set up so that one, it can work for guys that have never timber framed in their life. Two, if you're a pro timber framer, this is going to up your game because you're not only going to able to make just dovetail joints. We made several different joiners where you can actually build a entire building, gazebo, something for your wife, something outdoors where you're just using just the dovetail bit, no other traditional joinery. And some of the features that we did on this new jig here is that instead of making it out of aluminum, we made this out of solid quarter inch steel. And one of the reasons is, is that one, these jigs are expensive. Now mine aren't as expensive as the other ones that are out there and actually give you, let's say more joinery to use. And it's more user-friendly for you, but the quarter inch steel jig, if you happen to hit one of those aluminum jigs with your router, your plate is done. It's going to, the router bit is going to take it out and, and ruin it for you. So by using a steel bit or using a steel template for our jig, not only did it make it sturdy enough for us to make other joinery with it, if you do hit it, it's going to take out your router bit. So you can buy yourself a new $40 router bit or a thousand dollar plate for your jig. So by, by actually reworking an old idea, and that's what it is, an old idea without any other innovations, I did all of this for myself so that my builders would be stronger so that I can have one jig multifunctional that we always try to have. I hate something that only does just one thing. So not just for that, our guys, it's also a pocket jig, one of the most common timber framing joints out there. So if you're just doing pockets, this jig is going to help you with that. You're doing your standard dovetails. We did hip roof rafter dovetails with this thing. So now you're doing a skewed double angle dovetail different than any other guys had. And I, this is the first time, uh, these just came off my prototype. I was so excited to use them. I put everything on here and this is the first time that we cut any one of this joinery. Really why we developed this is that I wanted to be able to make pocketed dovetail jigs. Nobody else has this. I haven't seen this anywhere. I know some other guys are trying to get this stuff done, but this is a crazy way of making your joinery. So instead of just having a pocket, like a standard timber frame pocket, I have a pocket, which is normal. And then we added our dovetail jig board just for the strength of it. And the way that this slips together, I, you can't, you can't say that that's not a tight piece of joinery. Now this is actually a roof rafter. We can, uh, so you can do this on angles. You can do this on floor joists. You can do this on the skewed, on the hip rafters that you want to, you want to make hip and valley rafters, look up. There's no other jig that's going to do this for you. And this is what helps hold. See, if I had just a pocket, I'd be like, okay, I'm taking my board. I'm leaving with me. Try. I'm picking up my whole thing with it because of the strength of this thing. It's going to keep everything from walking on you. The boards are not going to want, you're going to have strength between your buildings, holding it together. Even though we are going to put a screw in here, even though there's some techniques that you need to learn to get this done, right. With a little practice and like us, I didn't just jump in and go, all right, I'm going to build a building with it and just get after it. I threw up a log and made every piece of joinery that you can make. Here's a tie beam connection here. This is just, if you just wanted to do your standard pocket, that's a pretty simple scenario. And maybe the jig wouldn't be worth it if it was just a pocket gig, but it just added another feature to the same jig that you're going to have. So you're skewed rafters, regular pockets, dovetail joints, rafter joints, and then the infamous, my friend, the pocketed dovetail. I couldn't be more excited. And in this video, every one of these pieces of joinery, first time we tried it with a little practice, any newbie can get this done. So you stick with us and a jig that's going to change your life. If you're a timber framer, it's going to change your life. If you're a new timber framer, it's going to change your world. So let's get into it, Jay. So let's just say you want to make a timber structure completely out of dovetail joints and not use traditional joinery methods. And a lot of people are going to shy away from the design because of the complexity of what you're looking to do. So let's do a roof, let's do a skewed roof rafter like you would do on a hip roof or a valley roof. So again, I'm just going to use our three pitch because I like that little pitch, Jay. That's easier. It doesn't shed water too much. We're just going to make our first cut. And let's say we're going to be making a hip rafter right here. So you need to cut yourself the square on your line, what you have here, but you also need to have your saw set at 45 degrees because that's how a hip roof does go together. If we can keep Jay from standing. I don't know how I'm going to stand up. I'm not falling over, Dan. Okay, let me see if I can get this cut. I'm That's a big cut. Even with the big saw, you're not going to be able to get yourself to cut through. So what we're going to do is we're going to take one of John from Star Hill Timberworks. Oh, I put it back over there. You put it over here ready for me and I'm looking for it. We're just going to hand saw and finish this. We might have to sand it a little bit, but let's see. This is almost like the old school method, Jay. Well, you got to do a little old school with the new school. Old school versus new school. It's getting warm for hand sawing now. Yeah, it's going to be too warm next month for sure. How are we doing on that? Very close, real close. You're almost there. Keep up the good work. These pine beams got hard, Jay. Yeah, they did. These things are well aged now. Actually worked pretty good. Not a lot of sanding there, Dan. No. So now I'm building a skewed rafter. OK, so we're just all we're doing, you can see right here, we're just trying to make a perfectly flat area right here for our jig to sit. Did we finally lose that? No, it's been it's been one step. Oh, you know what? Tape finally broke, Jay. I have to fix that. A little piece of tape and you're good to go. So this is going to be so this is slightly wider than our jig. We're at eight and a half. So I'm looking to make my center at the four and a quarter. Come a little four and a quarter. We're going to just want to square what we've got going on, but we want to square it off of our line right here. So that four and a quarter. So there is the skew and that skew on the skew. There's the skew on the skew. So we're going to be able to clean one of the edges here and we're going to have to. I'll show you how we have to finish this off. It's slightly, slightly wider than the jig. Now to make this plane, we need to do the exact same thing that we did the first time. I need to come in, mark my inch. It seems very intimidating at first, but it's making sense to me. I'm going to tell you right now, taking this little piece. Oh, yeah. I mean, just the little landing spot or whatever you call it. It's a little landing spot. You're going to need to do this also with the same angle that you had. So I'm going to take my one inch mark that I had. I'm going to bring me down to my three pitch and there's going to be my straight line that I'm looking to cut so that everything is going to sit up on there flat. So that's how we're going to want to do that. And yeah, let's do it the easy way this time, Jack. There you go. How do you like that? Little blue is a lot easier to handle. He is. I should have went with that three power cord that you were trying to get. I know, but I know those can be pain in the, you know, you're dragging it. Yeah, you're dragging it. So I'm just going to cut this off, giving me that flat spot where the dovetail is actually going to get marked into. There we go. I'm going to have to watch this segment twice, Dan. You're going to have to remember that this is going to be lifted into place. So it's still going to have to be square like we have it going on here. Okay. To make this complex joint, we just can't lay the plate into its place. We need to follow the line that we put, because that's going to be our center. I need to imagine that this is going to be tilted up, cut on a 45. So all of this joint for it to line up, this is how you'll have to do it. Now I rest my one plate here. That's going to give me the same thickness as that I'm going to use when I cut it onto the, let's just call it the hip, Jay. Okay. So here we go. I'm just getting my beam in place, center line, center line. So there, I just had to adjust to the middle. I always put my screw right on the line and it should get you into the position that you want. Now, if you look on the outside of this, you can see that the jig is following the same plane as the cut that we made. So as we cut this off, it's going to look crooked, but it's going to stand straight. Very interesting looking. This is, I know I'm blowing Jay's mind this morning. I wasn't even going to show this technique. And then I woke up last night. I'm like, who doesn't want to make something cool? Well, I mean, it's, you know, we're going to deal with it a lot. I think I've avoided some of that and some of the design, these more complex things just, you know. Yeah. Because you're like, Hey, I have to do that in the field. Yeah. Now we have to practice with this a little bit. You can get yourself into some really complex joinery, but this one, we're going to have to eat quite a bit more wood than we did on the last. Let me get my guy started, Jay. Hopefully you like a wood chip for breakfast. Forget the Cheerios. It's the wood chips we like. I think maybe we need to get you the face shield. And a hazmat suit. That's pretty impressive. I know. So even though that we're centered off of our line right here, we're going to have to make a cut right here just to finish off what we were doing. Totally worth it. It's totally worth it. And I'm going to show you how easy it is once I brush all of this stuff off of me. So even though it looks complex, this is a lot easier than trying to do it with traditional joinery and making that work. That's cool. There's my pocket. Hey, Dan, here you go. Let me help you out there. Blow me up. You might even want to consider wearing a face shield. I've got I did get hit. I used my beard as protection. I got one in the Jeep. I'll get you one. I was more concerned about everybody else. Oh, they might want to use a face shield. I got you. Yeah, I look good with scars. So I'm just even though I was a lot of cuts for a router to do. Yeah, it is. So we're still at 45. Eventually I'm going to get that right. So I've cut everything here on a 45. Oh, we're going to mark down. I'm going to go back to my three pitch. Oh, now I see it. OK, there you go. You got it. What I'm going to do. Got it. You with me? I'm with you. Loving it. I know this is a two step process. This is a big beam. Yeah, but you're talking five to 10 minutes to do something. I know that would take. Yeah, I know. So even though that this is off centered or it's looking off centered here, we're able to get a nice, clean cut on the finish here. And then when we lay out our rafters, even though it was shown there in the middle, we're going to get that done. So this is what we're going to do. I'll take my little blue saw and knock him on a 45. And I'm going to cut it slightly bigger because I prefer I would prefer to sand it than I would not sand it. I'm just going to make sure my 45 is working good here. So, yeah, I'm already going to be on the short side of that. Yeah. So the sanding process will take care of everything that you need. You have to do it this way. You have to do it that way, which makes it a little bit more difficult. Yeah. Well, let's make it more advanced for you. Got to plug it in. My other issue. Most of these guys watch me plug stuff in, unplug stuff, plug stuff in. Yeah, it's like 20 minutes of the video is you plugging in and unplugging. Imagine if it was all set up, Jay, with that three pronger. Not bad. I like how you left that there. See how everything is straight and square and flat right there. And I left it just a little bit heavy. We unplug and plug in again. You probably have 43 cords. Yeah. And that just the grinder is the way to go. This thing. Yeah. Oh, I know. Okay. Look at that. So it looks like even though I centered the beam, this is the exact center when we measured what was going on there. It looks like my tail or my dovetail is off centered on the beam. Now I've kept this one close because this is the end that's going to pinch into the rafter. But what's really happening is you need to remember that we cut off material. So from this side, when the jig went in one inch, we lost an inch over here. And in here, we actually gained an inch because of the way the depth of the dovetail bit that was there. So if you're doing this beam and you wanted this particular joint to be dead center, you'd have to do a one inch offset. So instead of it being the four and a quarter from the point, it should have been five and a quarter from the point. And then that would center what you have going on there. And it's easy enough here. If you had to do a test piece and look, we have four inches on this side and we're two inches on this side. By adding that inch is going to be three. By minusing that inch, it's going to be three. It would center your joint right there. It doesn't matter as much as long as your pocket matches, right? As long as your pocket matches. I actually like it because it's pinching up against my face end. This is the end that's going to be tougher to see on the inside of the angle. And that's how I did that. Okay. Who knows? Maybe I'll cut one on the center and show you the offset. That's the math. That's how the math would work to get that into the center. So here we're going to even try our, what is this? Our compound, uh, dovetail joint here. And I'm going to show you why. Um, I told you before that I had it pitched off to the edge on a three degree, even though the joint fits and you can see how this is going to sit together with that timber for a rafter. You see where we have to get the angle that we want to do. So I'm going to go over here and I'm going to cut you. And I'm going to cut an angled, um, what do I want to say? It's an angled piece on my hip roof that we're going to just say, well, this is the piece we're going to join together, but you could see that the pocket still fits the strength of it. How the end that's why I cut the end the way that I did. So this perfectly finished and it's what you're really going to see kind of hard to get your head, even though that's still perfect inside here. Um, it's hard to get your head in there. Even the inspectors don't stick their heads in there to look at that. I don't think they're going to need to know once they see what you're doing here, you're just going to get a check mark from them and you're just going to move on me. They offered me a job. I said, heck no, my friend, I already got a job. Nobody wants Dan to be an inspector. My job, they're going to let some stuff slide yours. Heck no. Sorry, fellas. Inspector Dan. Thank God I'm not an inspector. So now setting up for your hip rafter or your compound, uh, rafter that you have here. Now we use this on a three pitch. This is considered a common rafter. So it's done on the three pitch. If you know anything about the roof rafters, this is actually your common rafters. And you can see the pitch of a three pitch here. And these are your hips and valleys. It's not exactly the same because they're actually at different planes. You're running at maybe running at a 45, but it's a different height. So the easy way to do this, if you're by yourself, you set it up. So right here, I'm on my three pitch from my hip and valley, because this is the actual hip of our piece. You can see how much less of a degree it is than the three pitch of the common. And that's going to line your rafter up perfect when you set up there. So I'm just going to take, just take this. Am I still good? I'm still good. That's good to me. So I'm just, here we go. I'm just holding that into place. I'm going to take my jig. I got my plate where we want it sitting on my jig, my handle. It was a good idea. It was a good idea. We're just going to have to reverse engineer it. Are you guys okay with that? Still on three, right? Yep. There we go. I'm going to take my hip and right here. I'm going to line it up exactly where I have my plates going to be up against the top here, just like we did on our other rafter. Everything's both the same. Let's plow this in. I'm excited to see if this works. This is going my first, this is my first hip and valley rafter ever. That's pretty bold, Dan. It is bold. Why not put it on video for the first time? So yes, the first time it might take you a little longer. By the time you get to your 10th one, you're going to be the hip and valley master. I have never seen, and I don't know if they exist, but I have never seen any jigs that do anything like this. No, I mean, no, they do. They do maybe one thing. Um, you know me, I don't know if we're going to, I have a jig that does one thing. I wanted to make a jig that I can do that. Anybody can do any joint become timber framer overnight. And I know this haunts you at 3am when you wake up because I get the text. It does. I get up at two. I don't text you until three because I monitor the idea in my head just a little bit before I get going. You workshop it a little bit. I like it. Hey, it's working though. Innovation nation, man. So like any other other one, the easiest way for you to let's say par out all the material you want is to just go from right to left and just keep doing a circular motion, taking wood, pulling out the sawdust, taking wood, pulling out the sawdust. Um, sometimes it's baked. We're taking out a pretty good big chunk here. Yeah. And that's the best part about this gig. You can hear if I miss boom, you're not going to overcut. It's keeping your pocket. Perfect. Both sections of the jig, whether I'm using this jig or that jig, it's keeping you where you want to be. So there's really at the end of the day, you're not fighting. Let me get rid of some of these. Yeah, it's a nice knife you got there. You know where I get my stuff. John's a little market knife, and I love this for this job. You can get right in here. The fibers are coming out. That's it. I'm going to go around, do a cleanup. I think this is the last joint we're going to use with this dovetail bit. I wasn't going to say anything about your bit, Dan. Pocket done. Skewed hip pocket done. Nothing wrong with that. No. The only thing that could be wrong with that, Jay, is if it doesn't fit. And we need to make an adjustment. Now, I don't know. This is the first one I've ever done. I want to say ever. I mean, I've done it by hand, just never with a jig. I've never even seen a jig that can perform this. It might make you want to make a more complicated structure because now you have the availability to go with a jig. Well, I think once you practice with the standards, it just gets easier to do this type of stuff after that. And just like I have here, cutoffs laying around. Don't just dig into your fine material. And maybe if you have a nice new router. Oh, bit. I'm not going to lie, Jay. Router bit on, but we're so deep into this video right now. Hey, but it shows what's possible. You know, I mean, it still worked. This is with a right. Still worked. This is with a still crappy bit. So we're going to check it out right now. I want to put a I want to make my everything smooth and we'd be waxing these two. So we would be waxing these at the end, which is going to make it easier to slip in. Let's just see if we worked out where we're supposed to be. Cross my fingers, Dan. I'm crossing to it's looking pretty positive. I'm not going to lie. It's even. I don't know if we're flush yet, but it's looking pretty close. I mean, just give me a belt sander. Oh, come on now. Come on now. Really? First, you can't beat that. Oh, I mean, the strength of that you see me beating this poor little jaw together. Wow. OK, but see, that's how because we change the angle to follow the hip, which is they figured this out a hundred years ago. I didn't figure this out. They put a little mark on my jig. I just learned how to use it. Now my rafters are all perfect. Can we set that upright like it would be like in and still the same here? You see, we have this slight I just get my fingernail in there. So we know we're not pressing against there. And quite frankly, let's see this thing. This is cool. We're going to build a hip roof this week. Sorry, we got a lot more structures to go. Look at that. So as you know, this is going to be tilted up like that. That's how the roof is going to work. Double compound miters. And I'm not or I'm not. You can see why when I said I put this off to the end, that it's holding the tip of this into place. It's I really want to beat it with my hammer, but I know you're not getting that. You're not going sideways with this in any direction. No, that's not moving anywhere. We're going to get it out. There it comes. That's how tight that goes together. Yeah, I see. I see a trend here. There's a trend. Snug. This is now an this jig can do an entire project. Hip roofs, tie beams, purlins, floor joists, you name it. Well, I've been impressed before, but that one's really impressive. That's freaking my mind out. And it looks odd. What are you trying to do, sir? I know, but damn. It's good. Yeah. Let's see if we need to change the depth on our skewed one, because this is a little bit different than normal. So there's a possibility we might need to reline this up and go a little deeper. And there's always a possibility that it just fits. Those are my two favorites. It's hard for me to tell on that one. I was thinking, I wonder if we have to go deeper, but I don't know. We'll find out here shortly. Let's see what happened right here. I'm believing we're going to have to go deeper. Yeah, maybe not. It's not a lot, but it does have to go deeper. I could tell exactly what I have going on here. It needs to be five eighths of an inch deeper for that pocket to work. So for me to do that, it's really a simple dimple, I guess. And since the pocket is going deeper, we should not have any issue with the pocket. Since we're doing a tapered pocket, the deeper we get, we're going to take a little bit more off. Those hit the ground a lot, Jay. I know they do. At least that one's not 20 some feet to the concrete. That's right. So you can almost see how this pocket is a little bit different than that pocket in the length of it. So to make ourselves go the distance that we want, I get to do it to the top side. So I'm going to mark. Adjusting this thing is no big deal at all. It's just no big deal. It can't go on square, by the way. He's got the bolt patterns in here. I mean, we worked this so that it was perfectly straight with one another. We're just going to loosen everybody up. I'm going to move my plate. What I need, which is right there, right there. Let's snug this back up, Jay. Snug it up. A higher bench would have been better for this. Yeah, well, it's better for your back ultimately, though. So get everything back in line. Kat wants to know what's up. A little sawdust. She's like, where's my hip roof? She wants a hip roof cat house. I know. Hi, girl. Boy, I'm not sure what hello, you. OK, so we're going to just reset us back up exactly the way we had it, except we're going to be a little bit deeper this time. Mm hmm. And you can see by us going deeper, not shallower. We're able to recut our line right here. So I do believe I do believe that this one's going to work. Sometimes it takes me a hair bit longer to get a couple of these done. Once I get it down, we get it down. And this is pretty advanced stuff, though. This is advanced. It's hard enough to cut yourself a hip roof, no less a timber frame hip roof. OK, there you go. There you go, Jay. Got you. Use that finger. I got you. One finger on the button. One finger on the mic. Oh, good. One finger on the still getting my plate back where I want it to be. Then we're going to know, is our skewed angle right? Is our roof right? I mean, you just make all the joints all at once. Not one today, not one tomorrow. I'm telling you what, when we do the gangs like that, when we do a whole bunch, it just knocks them out so fast. It is. By the time you do one, it might take you a minute to get yourself ready and hooked up by number two and three. You're just going right through them. I line them up and just enjoy the day, Jay. Yeah, well, this one's a little new, though, right? So it takes a little finagling to get it figured out exactly. This is a new jig, new applications and a new roof. We're going complex this time, not just floor joists and purlins, but the whole kit, rafters and all. There you go. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that router bits kind of had it. It's OK, we're going to finish this video with it. He's got one more job. I actually do have one more I could put on, but it's you know, this would have been sitting out here. This is dry. Actually, it does respond differently on hardwood, though, too, especially if I could do it in green wood. Yeah, it takes it takes a nice sharp edge to it. But in realistic terms, you're better off for these to be dry. Yeah, because then you won't have any shrinkage in your dovetails. It made a very clean cut. Yeah, it did. So I'm not going to come. No, I'm just messing with it. I'm not going to complain about that enough stuff here on the I know you're going to be tripping. Is this my skewed piece? That's you right there. Let's see how we did. That's what I care about. How did we do? We're going to be liking that. I think I'm going to be liking that. I think I'm going to be like everything's right here on the ground. I don't know why I keep looking around. It's OK. Skewed rafter tail, my friend. I really developed this system for me, for my project, so that I could build something stronger. But with the community and the membership we have and the people that keep asking me about these dovetail jigs, there's no there's no way that I'm not going to not share it with my people. I know that there's several other ones that you've seen on the market. They're at such a ridiculous price that a beginner timber framer or do it yourself timber framework guys that just want to make a project can even afford that. So we've went over every edge of this, how to make our pockets, how to make our dovetails. And now we're into the point of pocketed dovetails, skewed rafter dovetails, hip dovetails. I'm super excited to actually start another building, Jay. And we just finished one. This is going to change things a bit. And I'm ready to go. So if any of you guys are interested in seeing if you can obtain one of these jigs that we have, and this is my prototype. Okay, this one came right off the mill. And this is the first time we ever use it. It's not like I'm practicing for months and months. And yes, I've used my old jig hundreds and hundreds of times. So I'm somewhat familiar with it. You contact us on our website. I think we have a website now, don't we? We do. I'm working on it. And I think the link was even working. So you touch base, you get onto the page of the dovetail jig, drop us a line. We'll tell you where we're at. We don't have thousands of these things made, but we will get them to you. If that's something that you want, because the price of these is going to be quarter of the price of the big guys that you just say, Hey, yeah, it's on my wishlist. Your wishlist never gets solved. If you want a jig like this, we'll make sure that you get it. So hopefully you see that our hard work that we're here to help you guys out, not just help myself out. We're here to help you guys out. It's a win-win. It's a win-win. It's a win-win-win. And I've never had three wins and we build a lot of stuff, Jay. And you're a winner, so. And we're winners.