Machines and rosettes

I have an uneasy relationship with woodworking machines. I know they will do things quickly and they will reliably repeat operations. That is, once you get them set up. Often I can make a cut more quickly with a hand saw than I can with the table saw. I admit that's partly because the table saw is often covered with stuff. It's a horizontal surface and that's what tends to happen to every horizontal surface in my shop. Aside from that, if the piece is short or thin it's safer to cut it with a hand saw.

I have a well-equipped shop and I use some of the machines often. The band saw gets a lot of use and the table saw gets quite a bit if I'm cutting up panels or making repetitive cuts. I like my battery-powered drill/drivers. On the other hand, the bench top jointer hardly ever gets taken out. I prefer to use a hand plane and I'm reluctant to use the planer although I did have to admit defeat when I was making a couple of end-grain cutting boards and was faced with the task of surfacing them with hand planes.

My first wooden rosette

I've been wrestling with the old dilemma again this past week. My ukulele journey involves learning how to make rosettes to decorate the sound holes of instruments. Most folks use a router to cut the ring in the top into which the rosette gets inlaid. It's efficient; it's accurate. Jake has a Dremel tool with a router base and a circle cutting jig. I can learn to use his. I find myself resisting. Routers freak me out a bit. They're noisy and those bits spin so fast. If I don't get the bit in right... If I'm honest there's more to it than fear and worry about safety. I'm enamoured with the idea of being able to accomplish most woodworking tasks with a relatively simple set of hand tools. Of course, people who can do this started when they were in their teens and I don't have 30 or 40 years to perfect the skills. Still, it's an idea that won't let go of me. I don't have to make my living through my craft and it really doesn't matter how quickly or how slowly I get things done. So for the last 5 days I've been in the shop trying to create a manual circle cutting jig. 

This didn't work

I need a compass, or something like it, with a cutting blade. I need a way to keep the point from moving and a way to keep the cutter from shifting while I'm rotating it around the centre point. I thought I had a way that would work: take a wooden beam, attach a cutter to the end of it and put a track in the beam that allows the pin to move back and forth to change the size of the circle. Simple enough. Well, not really. I screwed the blade onto the end of the beam and broke the blade. Not one to give up, I laminated the part of the blade that was left between two thin pieces of wood and screwed that to the beam. How to get the point to stay put? I haven't figured that one out yet, at least not on the original design. I tried pinching the arms together with a screw – not tight enough. I tried a few other things as well and gained a new appreciation of Thomas Edison who learned hundreds of ways that didn't work to make a light bulb. Next I tried using a bolt as a centre and drilling a hole in a board to accept the bolt. The top would have a corresponding hole in it that would slip over the shaft of the bolt so I could rotate the cutter. This is the system Jake uses with his router. The drill bits I have are either too big, there is slop in the pin, or too small I have to thread the bolt into the hole in the wood and that means it won't turn freely.

This worked

After some checking on lutherie forums, I came across the suggestion to use a 'lolly' stick and an X-acto blade. I grabbed a tongue depressor (yes I have a bunch around left over from some craft project or other at school) and carefully poked a hole in it with a push pin. On the opposite end I cut a slit just big enough to take the point of an X-acto knife blade. I stuck the pin into a piece of wood, held the X-acto knife in place and scribed a perfect circle. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

I'm still not satisfied. I want something a little more robust than that although with a collection of sharp blades it would do the job just fine. I have a small router plane that I can use to hog out the waste in the ring once the outer lines are established. I embarked on another internet search and found a few more possibilities. The one I'm working on at the moment involves holding the blade in place in a mortise with a wedge and sinking the centre pin into a piece of wood which will fit into an elongated mortise. The plan is to hold the centre pin in place with a bolt, nut and washer. It should work.

This may work

I decided that rather than cut the mortises I would cut the beam in half, cut one side of the mortise into each half and then glue the halves together. The first time I tried it I cut the mortises correctly in one piece and upside down in the opposite piece. I've got them correctly cut in the one I'm working on now. I used the bandsaw to cut the beam and then to rip it in half. The mortises themselves I've marked with a knife and cut with a chisel. It's taken me hours where it would have taken minutes with a router or even with a drill press. I have thoroughly enjoyed marking, chopping and paring while listening to my current who-dun-it. I don't know if this one will ultimately work or not but I know there are a few more hours of enjoyment to be had in trying to get it to work. I also know that as I struggle with the task my skill level increases and, as I said earlier, I don't have to make a living with the work of my hands. If I get really fed up I can use the router or I can give the 'lolly' stick and push-pin contraption another go. If that one breaks it's easy enough to get replacement parts. I'll let you know how the ring for the rosette in Richard's ukulele eventually gets cut. Stay tuned.