Last night we opened the doors of our offices and shop, set up the buffet table and put on our official Popular Woodworking shirts. Matt Grisley, CEO of Leigh Industries came to town with a pile of dovetail and mortise and tenon jigs. We emptied out the router locker, let the caterer in the back door and waited for company to arrive.

One of the largest crowds we've ever had showed up and after dinner we headed back to the shop. Matt showed us the ins and outs of his company's jigs, including the new Super Jigs. These jigs have many of the features of the original D4R jigs for making variable space dovetails with a router. They cost less, and allow for variable spaced tails with fixed width pins. Senior Editor Glen Huey had been to the Leigh Industries headquarters a few months ago, and filed a detailed report here on the blog. One of the impressive new accessories is a Vacuum router support that fits all of the old and new Leigh jigs. This was especially appreciated by those of us who spent the morning cleaning up the shop and sweeping the floor.

Matt also demonstrated the Leigh FMT mortise and tenon jig and its capability to make adjustments to the fit in .001" increments. That's not a frown on Matt's face, that's the way Canadians say "pretty good fit, eh?".

To close out the evening, we pulled names from a hat, and Phil Kline, Ken Maurer and Eric Bosch each went home with a new Super Jig. We hold these events from time to time, and have some interesting ones in the works for next year. We can't mention any names at the moment, but one will be a rock-solid approach to machinery and the other will be a sure-fire method of cutting joints by hand. If you sign up for our E-mail Newsletter on the home page, you'll be among the first to know about the next event.