[DesertRatTom]

For shop stands and cabinets, using regular, 5-7 layer, 3/4 ply, I'd skip the box joints and go to another kind of joint. If you use Baltic Birch, which has about 13 layers and no voids, you could use box joints, but I don't know whether you'd like seeing all the layers every other finger. For all ply cabinetry, consider using dados and rabbits, or even easier, pocket holes (with glue).

Pocket holes have to be drilled in places where they won't be seen, or filled in. They are plenty strong if installed every 5 inches or so. Make certain your saw blade is 90 to the table and the fence 90 to the blade, pocket holes will then pull your cabinet or stand square, and pocket holes do the same to 90 degree cuts to face frame rails and stiles.

Rabbit and dado construction is quite nice for cabinets as well, but you need to make certain they are held square during glue-up.

When you make tool stands, consider adding casters, two fixed on the back, 2 swivel with both wheel and swivel locks so you can prevent movement when in use. Put doors on all cabinets and stands, it will help keep sawdust from invading every nook and cranny.

I've built a lot of stands for my tools, every one with doors. I've used both the metonds (dados/rabbets, pocket holes) and all stands are ridgid after years of use. For no particular reason, I use spherical 1.25 inch knobs painted a very intense, high gloss Ferrari red--it's cheerful.

I also have the same jig, but most of my projects are BB ply these days. BTW, you could make the cabinet out of carefully selected pine, stained, it will look pretty nice. HD has some 1x4 by nearly an inch thickness. Pick nice pieces, joint or cut a flat edge, cut the other edge flat, and use them to glue up your panels. These have very small knots that stay tight, and the extra thickness lets you plane to even everything up. If you're fussy and lucky, you can find some clear pine that's straight, but you might have to visit several Orange stores to find the number of pieces you need. I generally make face frames from nice straight pieces of hardwood. Again, pick the pieces carefully, or even cut them out from straight, flat sections of larger pieces. Then box joints make sense, and you can enjoy using that great jig-just buy enough wood so you can make some test joints to tune the jig.

Stick's admonitions apply.

 

[DesertRatTom]

I'm with Stick on this one. A box joint is squared off, a finger joint is tapered. Period. They have separate and distinct purposes. A finger joint can only create a longer, straight piece. A box joint can make a right angle turn, or in theory a longer piece. But you can't make a box with a finger joint. Let's all be purists about this, OK? I think the confusion comes from naming the box joint's protrusions "fingers." If they were called, say, flugles, there'd be less confusion--don't you think?.

 

[DesertRatTom]

Charles, yes I did, but they only perpetuate the confusion. I think the point is that a (tapered) finger joint can't make a 90 degree corner while a box joint can. Small box joints (1/8th for example) don't fit the finger definition, so they are small box joints. For me, that is very clear. Too bad the box joint protrusions are called fingers. But I'm not insisting that anyone else follow this convention, but if you say tapered finger joint, you're covered. if there's no taper, it's a box joint. If it's angled and interlocks and forms a 90 degree angle, it's a dovetail joint.

From the Joint Book:
Box Joint: Another name for a finger lap joint with straight, interlocking fingers.
Finger lap joints also go by the name of Box joint and share the same definition.

The book doesn't include a tapered finger joint, but to make it clear, here is a pix of a tapered finger joint and the router bits that make them. If it's called a tapered finger joint, then it seems a more accurate and descriptive definition to me. I've spent most of my adult life writing and try to say what I mean with accuracy, so this conflating finger and tapered fingers and box joints just doesn't give clarity for me. No offense meant to anyone with differing points of view.

 

[DesertRatTom]

Have you noticed that posts about tapered finger joints require a picture and a long string of posts when they ask about a finger joint when they mean box joint? So first thing, we have to have either a picture or drawing or explanation to know whether they're talking about a box, or a finger joint? That is evidence that misuse of the terms leads to confusion, and long argumentative strings like this one.

The only way to correct this is a lifelong campaign of reaching every tool maker, every fixit guy who is making videos, responding to every article that misuses the terms and correcting them. And then, some guy in a garage in Idaho will misuse the term and the process starts again. So we'll probably keep arguing one side vs the other around here, and we'll probably repeat this string endlessly to some of our frustration, and for others, to their satisfaction. Clarity or ambiguity.. Which is better?

 

[DesertRatTom]

Don't worry Charley, we like to thrash about on issues like this. We've had our say and are satisfied, for now at least.

 

[DesertRatTom]

Doncha love a food fight, Larry and Moe? I was having some trouble making a wanglewhoozer joint the other day, because the tapered box from the Orange place was trapezoidal rather than curvalinear. So my fence had to be tapered instead.