# Using a portion of a template to make a project



## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

I should have posted these a while back, hopefully they'll be valuable for someone in the future.

I had to make a ship's wheel for a pirate graveyard display for a Girl Scout halloween function a few years back. My father was kind enough to loan me the wheel, but I didn't think he would want it left in the yard for a few days. The solution was to copy it and reproduce it out of something 'disposable'. I thought about just tracing it and cutting it out with a jigsaw, but I doubt I would have had any luck getting it to look remotely symetrical. An obvious solution was a template.

I traced it on to 1/4 inch MDF (I wish I had used 3/8, that would have given more bearing surface to ride on) but only traced a quarter of the wheel. I used my scrollsaw to cut it out, and found that 18" of throat depth wasn't quite enough, I had to cut the interior out in 2 steps. A little bit of sanding to refine the shape just a little and I had the template.

I put the template on to a piece of 3/4 mdf, and traced it's outline. I drilled an index hole at the center of each spoke, and transferred them to the MDF. I did a test, spinning the template, putting a nail in the index hole and tracing the outline until I got all the way around. I missed the final index hole by just under 3/16 inch, but the the outline I had traced on the sheet looked good. 

I cut out the bulk of the material with the jig saw and started routing. I used 2 different pattern bits, one that had a 1/2 inch cutting depth, and one that had a 1 inch cutting depth. This let me nibble away at the waste keeping the bearing on the template. When each section was done, the template was rotated.

The finished result was a success, and a pretty respecable copy. It was finished with matte black paint and satin poly.


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Your skills Doug certainly don't end with marine engineering! That was excellent.


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## OPG3 (Jan 9, 2011)

Doug - that is some very smart execution! Just looking at this makes me want to eat at Red Lobster. That's from being hungry and impressed! Making and using templates can require a lot of creative imagination and you hit the nail on the head! I'm currently making some router templates for an ammo manufacturer to go on his automated bullet stacker - accuracy is so much the key to effective indexing!


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