In woodworking, you often have to build something in order to build something. I know, that sounds odd, but it’s true. There are many occasions where building a jig, though it takes some time, saves you time in the long run or makes the project much easier to complete. This was a reality for me for an upcoming project. I needed to build a circle cutting jig for my router.
I won’t go into all the details in this post…mainly because a created a video of the process. Wouldn’t you rather watch? Here’s the video (with a full transcript below the video).
Watch the Circle Cutting Jig Video:
Video Transcript:
Hey, everybody, this is Handcrafted by Jason Cooper.
I am in a shop today and I’m going to build a circle cutting jig for my router. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while but I’ve got a project coming up where I have to cut a radius on several pieces for this project and having a circle cutting jig will make that a lot easier.
It’s actually a fairly simple project, although you never know what you’ll run into when you start a project.
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The first step was to route a spot for the router to actually sit. Considering I did this free-handed, it actually turned out pretty well. My router sits very well inside that spot. Now, I’ll transfer the marks for the mounting screws through to the jig and mount the screws from the underside, countersunk so they won’t be in the way.
That’ll hold the router nice and steady where it’s supposed to be. So now I can cut this template to width right about here, about eight inches wide, and start making the rest of it.
After a few frustrations, my circle cutting jig for my router is done.
I have an adjustable slot here and a pin which is just some old hardware that I had sitting around.
I can adjust it anywhere from about a six-inch radius to almost 36 inches.
There’s an oversized hole to accommodate various sizes cutting bits.
On the bottom, I’ve got a slotted groove in it for adjustment. The end of the bolt can function as a pin and you just drill an appropriate hole in the bottom side of whatever you’re cutting into a circle and use that as the pivot point. Someday I’ll probably put a better knob on here, but for now, that will do.
A simple circle cutting jig.
