On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 04:57:04 -0700 (PDT), Greg Guarino
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 10:57:04 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:
On Tue, 2 Apr 2019 19:43:19 -0700 (PDT), Greg Guarino
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 1:39:34 PM UTC-4, Leon wrote:
On 4/2/2019 9:36 AM, Greg Guarino wrote:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdguar...n/photostream/

It will be 34.5" long, with a 32" radius according to Sketchup. I imagine some of you might do it with a band saw and a spindle sander, but that's not an option for me.

I have done pattern routing in the past, with success. But I wonder if with this large a curve it might be easier to whip up a jig with a pivot point 34" from the router bit. I would of course roughly cut out the shape with a sabre saw before routing in either case.

Advice?


I have a piece of plywood that I attach my router on to and I pivot the
router and plywood piece as you are mentioning. Just make the cut in
3~4 passes.

When I have a ellipse type arc I print the ark at full scale on
Sketchup, tape the pieces together, glue the drawing to the board and
cut out with either a band saw or jig saw. Then smooth with a spindle
sander.

In my case, I will definitely be using a router. I doubt that I could approach the accuracy I'll get with a router with any other method that is currently available to me. The question is should I make a template or make myself a circle jig.

The template I certainly know how to do. I was curious to see if anyone here used a "jig" - as you mention, just a piece of ply with a couple of holes in it. I may give that a shot. Do I understand you correctly that you do not even cut out the curve roughly beforehand? You make the entire cut with the router, getting deeper with each pass? I do have a plunge router, but I had not considered that.

If you can make a template then why not just cut the curve the same
way you would have cut the template?

You have a point, I guess. When I have done this before I was making multiple identical pieces. I still think I could "fair" a 1/4" MDF template to the curve more easily than 3/4" oak though.

Yes, and when you slip and screw it up, you won't cry as much over
ruined MDF. You can probably repair it well enough to continue using
it as a template, too.