Shim Jig - Make Your Own Shims

I made this jig a bunch of years ago, figured I'd pass it on. This is for making your own shims.

I started with a 5" x 8" 4/4 scrap of oak. I cut a wedge-shaped notch out of the side, then topped it off with a piece of hardboard and a crude but sturdy handle.



To use it, set your table saw fence at the width of the jig. Use as wide of a piece of stock that you can, and cut it to the length of the wedge section you cut out of the jig (mine is 6"). Hold the block of stock in against the jig while pushing the jig through the saw. The hardboard is there to prevent the wedge from launching out of the jig and into your cheek.

Make sure to use a zero-clearance insert to keep the wedge from getting sucked down and pinched in the blade. (I used a scrap piece of laminate.)







Flip the stock every other cut, and make a pile of shims.



The nice thing about this is, you can make shims out of any type of wood you want. I need these maple shims in the shop for leveling some massive structures I'm building. Softwood shims are falling apart.

 

Guaranteed I would have one of those stuck in my eye and my cut off finger jammed so far into my nose it would be tickling whats left of my brain.

Nice though

 

Why didn't I think of that?

 

I'm down with that. Shims are very useful when you're building stuff around the house. You should make it 1.5" thick, to take a scrap of 2x4 or other dimensional lumber.

 

Are you jiggy with it?

I'm a woodworker by trade, so 99% of the scraps I have lying around are of the 3/4"-1" variety. I rarely have a 2x4 in the shop aside from dunnage for shipping.

 

Heh. Jiggy. ISWYDT.

So 4/4 is 3/4" thick? I thought 5/4 was 1".

Next up for me is a shed ... not much cabinet making in this shop. I added safety bars to my lifting station last week with ... 2x4s. Very handy to have around.

 

A lot of times it depends on the sawmill and who you get your wood from, but generally, 4/4 = four quarters of an inch in the rough. When cleaned up, 4/4 will finish out between 3/4" - 13/16", and 5/4 will finish out at 1" - 1 1/16".

Back east, I always got my wood directly from a sawmill. 4/4 was 1" thick or greater, and I had to take a hand plane to it just to see what I was buying. Out here, the hardwoods are twice the cost, and I can't even get rough-sawn lumber. They surface it down to 15/16" or even 13/16" so they can fit more on a truck (since nearly all of it comes from back east).