Woodworkers are always making jigs. Sometimes a jig is used only once, other times it can be used hundreds or thousands of times. In this article and video we are making an adjustable circle jig for a router that has been designed and drawn by David Cooksey, one of our long-time members. David has been sending me plans and drawings of many different jigs and woodworking objects for some time now and we thought it was high time we let everyone else in on David's great ideas.
Today we are covering this circle jig, and you are welcome to down load your own version of it from our Plans section, and it's free ... and we all have David Cooksey to thanks for this. NOTE, you do have to be a member of woodworkweb in order to access our download section, but that's free too, and then you can access all the other plans and links to plans that we have put together for our members and subscribers. There is a short list of materials that you will need ....
The Router Circle Jig is made from 1/2 inch plywood, and you should have a nice flat, decent grade of plywood for this. You will also need some sort of a tightening knob or other similar fastening mechanism, also a 2 x 4 inch piece of cold rolled flat steel we refer to as a blank, which you can probably find as a scrap piece at your metal supply store and lastly you will need a suitable tap and matching bolt or the bolt connected to your tightening knob will need to match your tap that you will be using to create a threaded hole in your steel blank.
The first question many people will ask, is why wouldn't you just cut a circle on a bandsaw? Of even a Jig Saw or Scroll Saw? The answer is, well, if you have one or all of those tools, yes that is one option, but if you are looking for a nice clean cut the router might be a better choice, also, if you want to put some sort of a decorative edge on your circle, such as a you might see on a small table table, then the router is definitely the be best tool for that.
The main thing to keep in mind when making the jig is that there are really 2 points of importance on it, the point where the tool will cut the wood and the other point that will be the pivoting point. The rest of the jig is all about convenience and ease of operation.
We are not going to go on at length on how to make the jig because the drawing and video are mostly self explanatory and if you want to make changes or modifications to suit your particular router or applications, then you should do that.
When using the jig, especially with a pure carbide bit, remember to go slow and take smaller amounts of wood off with each repeated pass. The reason for this is that carbide is NOT steel. It's composition is more like crystal which means it will break before it bends. Too much force on the side of carbide bits and they will snap in half, which can also happen if you are forcing them into wood too quickly, they can snap there too. If you are logged in as a Member of Woodworkweb, you can find the plans by clicking HERE.
This is a well designed and thought out jig, our thanks to David Cooksey for providing us with this and his other drawings, plans and jig designs.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
Woodworkeb.com