Circle cutting jig for bandsaw?

[James T. Kirby]

Anyone have some nice shots of a circle cutting jig built for a 14" Delta-style bandsaw? (the type that extends off the side of the bandsaw's table). We are needing to cut circles with 2' to 4' diameters out of some as yet unspecified sheet stock.

These are going to be used as markers to ground truth the field of view geometry for an array of beach monitoring cameras. Big setup, with 7 cameras and a continuous mosaic view of about 4 km of beach for each of two monitored sites. Lot's of surveying.

Thanks,

Jim Kirby

[Dave]

Check New Yankee WS for jig plan

[George]

I'll try a pic of mine on ABPW. Warning, it's _very_ sophisticated.

Else, Duginskie.

[Swingman]

A trammel and a router is another option for that size circle, and often results in a cleaner cut, IME.

[kirby]

Thanks for the info everyone. I may go the trammel and router route - that didn't come to mind right away for some reason.

Kirby

[Andy Dingley]

No, because I don't have a nice camera.

You have two problems - sawing a circle, and sawing a tangent to this circle so as to start the cut.

If you're clever, you can make a sliding jig where the guide pin slides up to a stop adjacent to the blade, so that you can do the tangent start thing.

If you're lazy, like wot I am, then you'll just nail a piece of thin ply/MDF to the bandsaw table with a pin sticking up from it. Then drill the pinholes in your stock at the right distance from the edge for starting. Make a new jig for each size.

Or just buy your markers from the "picnic plates" aisle at Quickie-Mart

[James T. Kirby]

That would be nice. These are going to be 3-4 feet in diameter - hard to see them from 1-2 km away. I think the router and trammel suggestion is it.

JK

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