Shop Made Tools and Jigs

The books on wooden boat building talk off shop made tools and jigs.  John Brooks book in particular has some good inspirations on this and it does add to the fun. I made what you might call a "shop made tool" to help cut more accurate molds for my model. It's not totally original (you will find similar in forums) but I've added a neat vacuum dust sucker and workbench holding base. It's a upside down mounted jig saw (I used a spare one I have which is an AEG PST 500X) which you might call DIY band saw - lets call it a bandicoot - good Aussie marsupial.

The jigsaw base is level with the 9mm ply platform and the saw is held in by an aluminium bar I made to fit the guide holder slot. The length of platform was set so that I can have a full go at the length of cuts needed for my 1/5th model moulds. Now I thought I should add a protective cover over the naked blade so I had some quad aluminium sections and plastic joining connectors to do this. But as an added bonus I decided since the quad and connectors were hollow, why don't I connect my shop vac to the end of the tubing and voila! -  no dust to obscure lining up the cutting blade and mould curves and no dust falling into the saw motor.  A further twist I added to the design is the narrow base (a piece of 90x45mm hardwood which I clamp in my bench vice which gives the platform juts at the right height for operation - so no extra machine stand required.  The pic below is not that great but hope you get the gist of it from the description.  Cutting the moulds was a breeze!

A jig I have made for holding battens to test planking shapes uses brass screw in L brackets you find in amongst picture hanging stuff at the hardware store. I screw them into small pine blocks which I can then clamp firmly onto the moulds with small spring clamps. The 6mm ply moulds are pretty thin to be renailing in battens to see what the planking positions and sheerline looks like. So clamping these little fellers on doesn't preclude making changes to positions (just what I ended of having to do as you will read in the next post). Some pic below.