Celtic knot questions

[Warren White]

Never show the excellent pictures of Celtic knot pens to your daughter and her kids! Guess what? I now have several requests to get out of my comfort zone....

I really appreciate the great post by Bruce Robbins, showing his jigs. I will make them before I try the pens.

My questions surround the best angle to cut. I think the size of the knot must be determined by the angle. I would really appreciate hearing your counsel. Any other thoughts before I begin?

Thank you!

 

[StuartCovey]

Well, angle all depends (like you said) on how big you want the knot.

As you increase the angle, not only will this make the knot longer, it will also make the ends (the end grain of the slice of material) wider.
If you have a very small angle the ends will look rather close to the thickness of the slice of material. If you have a large angle the ends will look quite a bit thicker than the thickness of the material.

With that said. I find that about a 3/32" slice of material with a 60º angle gives the best overall size of the knot. This of course will also depend on the style you want. For some applications it will look better with a small knot and others a large.

Your going to find several different opinions on this

Good luck!

 

[Cloven]

Before I made my first Celtic knot, I made a simple sled where I could try different angles and made some throw away blanks. I found that 45 degrees was the bare minimum that looked good, but that I much preferred 60 degrees, with the material thickness exactly the same as the kerf, about 3/32 as Stuart mentioned. The angle you'd want all depends on how much space you want it to take up, but I personally would use something between 45 and 60 degrees. Stuart is also right in that the greater the angle, the thicker the top/bottom of the arches will look.

 

[Tim'sTurnings]

+3 on 60 degree bevel and a thin kerf saw blade. Good luck.
Tim.

 

[Warren White]

So.....

I gather that rather than cutting all the way through the blank, it appears that folks cut a kerf, leaving the blank barely hanging together and insert the opposing wood into the kerf.

Is this the recommended method? Can you not make a complete cut and put (for example) a thin piece of material on and glue the cutoff back on? Other than the obvious issue of having problems in clamping the cut/glued blank, are there other issues I should be aware of?

Thanks again!

 

[StuartCovey]

I gather that rather than cutting all the way through the blank, it appears that folks cut a kerf, leaving the blank barely hanging together and insert the opposing wood into the kerf.

Is this the recommended method? Can you not make a complete cut and put (for example) a thin piece of material on and glue the cutoff back on? Other than the obvious issue of having problems in clamping the cut/glued blank, are there other issues I should be aware of?

Thanks again!

You MUST cut a kerf instead of cutting all the way through to have a successful knot.

In order for the knot to work all the cuts have to match up.
For example, when you cut your second kerf you will be cutting through the first slice (that you have already cut and glued). Now if you cut all the way through you are going to have a tough time getting one half of the first slice to match up with the other half of it when you glue in your second slice (almost impossible, but there are ways of doing it as there are applications where you cannot make a kerf and must cut through). This will cause the center X of the knot to be misaligned.

By leaving a small fraction of the blank intact (about 1/16") you will be ensuring that both sides of the blank will match back up to their original positions.

Also, do not clamp the blank to hard when gluing or you will cause the the kerf to split and misalign.

 

[BRobbins629]

One or two tests are worth 1000 opinions. The angle on the jig can be easily altered. Just loosen the screws and modify to what looks good to you.

 

[kovalcik]

I gather that rather than cutting all the way through the blank, it appears that folks cut a kerf, leaving the blank barely hanging together and insert the opposing wood into the kerf.

Is this the recommended method? Can you not make a complete cut and put (for example) a thin piece of material on and glue the cutoff back on? Other than the obvious issue of having problems in clamping the cut/glued blank, are there other issues I should be aware of?

Thanks again!

For me, that is the easiest way to make them But as long as the fill wood thickness matches your saw kerf thickness exactly, you can make the complete cut. If they do not match, then The knot will be deformed.