blake_l
Member
Hi, all. Just thought I'd post a picture of my latest jig for shameless copying (if there hasn't been something like this before?) and/or comments. I made it a week or two ago and it seems to be working well. It's a lot cheaper than a sliding miter table!
I wanted to start doing some segmented pens, but got a little nervous after a Bloodwood blank blew up on my miter saw (still not quite sure what happened...) Thankfully my fingers weren't close enough to get damaged (although my thumb was numb for a couple hours), but I wanted another option.
It's fairly simple - plywood base with runners that fit in the T-slots on either side of the blade. Hold-down clamp holds either a blank at 90 degrees, or one of the angle blocks. The washers on the blocks still puzzle me a bit - I guess the blocks are a bit thinner than what a pen blank is. I wish I could find a hold-down clamp that doesn't have quite such a positive stop at the end - something that had an easily adjustable stopping point to deal with material of different thicknesses. The base acts just like a zero-clearance insert on the tablesaw so the small pieces don't disappear.
I'll probably build another version of this soon. There are a couple of things I'd change:
1.) Put the hold-down clamp on the left side of the block. I put it on the right side so it would be close to the blade and could hold short pieces at 90 degrees to keep my fingers away from the blade. Problem is, it acts as a pivot point - especially a problem when trying to cut a short piece at 45 degrees - it ends up wanting to rotate about the clamp (hope that makes sense...)
2.) Better materials. I used plywood for the base and just some scrap pine for the runners. I think the "wonderful" Houston weather is already affecting the pine - it was a very tight fit when I put it in this morning. I'll probably make the next sleds out of UHMW.
3.) Additional clamp, maybe two - possibly in a T-track for adjustability. I'd like one clamp to hold the angle blocks, and probably a long-arm clamp to hold the blank, wherever it ends up.
4.) Some sort of stop system to make repeatable cuts easier. Right now, I just put pencil marks and eyeball it.
5.) Different hold-down clamps as mentioned above.
6.) Thin-kerf blade. 1/8" kerf wastes a _lot_!
That's it for now. Comments welcome, as well as additional suggestions!
--Blake
I wanted to start doing some segmented pens, but got a little nervous after a Bloodwood blank blew up on my miter saw (still not quite sure what happened...) Thankfully my fingers weren't close enough to get damaged (although my thumb was numb for a couple hours), but I wanted another option.
It's fairly simple - plywood base with runners that fit in the T-slots on either side of the blade. Hold-down clamp holds either a blank at 90 degrees, or one of the angle blocks. The washers on the blocks still puzzle me a bit - I guess the blocks are a bit thinner than what a pen blank is. I wish I could find a hold-down clamp that doesn't have quite such a positive stop at the end - something that had an easily adjustable stopping point to deal with material of different thicknesses. The base acts just like a zero-clearance insert on the tablesaw so the small pieces don't disappear.
I'll probably build another version of this soon. There are a couple of things I'd change:
1.) Put the hold-down clamp on the left side of the block. I put it on the right side so it would be close to the blade and could hold short pieces at 90 degrees to keep my fingers away from the blade. Problem is, it acts as a pivot point - especially a problem when trying to cut a short piece at 45 degrees - it ends up wanting to rotate about the clamp (hope that makes sense...)
2.) Better materials. I used plywood for the base and just some scrap pine for the runners. I think the "wonderful" Houston weather is already affecting the pine - it was a very tight fit when I put it in this morning. I'll probably make the next sleds out of UHMW.
3.) Additional clamp, maybe two - possibly in a T-track for adjustability. I'd like one clamp to hold the angle blocks, and probably a long-arm clamp to hold the blank, wherever it ends up.
4.) Some sort of stop system to make repeatable cuts easier. Right now, I just put pencil marks and eyeball it.
5.) Different hold-down clamps as mentioned above.
6.) Thin-kerf blade. 1/8" kerf wastes a _lot_!
That's it for now. Comments welcome, as well as additional suggestions!
--Blake
