How to cut a circle in wood without a jigsaw

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Often, when repairing or installing various wooden products it is necessary to drill a perfectly round hole. In this article we will try to cover all the ways you can cut such a hole. Options with and without special tools will be considered. A hacksaw with a very narrow blade, a jigsaw, a boring saw, and a circular file are the hand tools you can use to saw through a curve.

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Watch video : How to cut a round hole in thin metal without special tools.

How to cut a circle from plywood without a jigsaw. The craftsman cuts perfect circles with the jigsaw. Transferring an image to a plywood or board surface

When working with different types of wood it is always necessary to know the detailed variations. Before you cut a circle in plywood, you need to know all the options, because often you have to adapt to the situation. There are many options for performing such a venture, and they differ dramatically.

In order to cut a circle out of plywood, you can use both professional tools and improvised means.

Drilling in wood and chipboard

And in general, even an ordinary nail or a piece of wire with a flattened end can be used for drilling in wood. Special wood drill bits are resorted to only when a large-diameter hole must be drilled, or when high demands are made on surface finish and accuracy. There are several kinds of these drills:

• spiral (a);
• twisted or single spiral (sometimes called spiral as well) (b);
• feather (c);
• ring drill bit (core drill bit) (d);
• Forstner’s cylindrical drill bit (e).

Wood drill bits are made of alloyed tool steels and carbon tool steels; they must not be used for metal work.

drill holes of small and medium diameter. It is quite possible to replace it with a metal drill, although the purity of the hole will be higher with a wood twist drill.

Has a sharp cutting edge and an auger shape that removes chips well. It applies when you need to get a precise deep hole with a clean wall surface.

is usually used for drilling holes of diameter from 10 to 25 mm, although there are drills with diameters smaller than 10 and larger than 25 mm. This drill is the simplest and the cheapest, so it is reasonable to use it in all cases, when the quality of the hole is not of high demands. Disadvantages of the feather drill include poor direction, poor diameter accuracy, rough hole wall surface, and the need to periodically remove chips by stopping drilling and removing the drill from the hole. The advantages are simplicity and cheapness.

How you make a circular cut?

Start with a piece of 1/2″ or 3/4″ plywood (or Fiberboard) that covers your tape table with a bend of an inch or so. Size is not essential. My table is 15 “x19”, so I cut the plywood to 16 “x20”.

Start with the back

Attach the slide to the back of the plywood base. You want it to fit in your mitre slot so you can easily insert the base into the blade with wood on both sides. I used a piece of plywood for my slide, so I wouldn’t have to worry about seasonal movement. I cut it on the table to fit my slot and then screwed it to the back with countersunk screws.

With the slide in place, feed your base into the blade and stop about halfway through (see. A picture of the finished clamp). Then add a block to the back of the clamp to act as a stop so you can’t cut further than this point.

Upward movement

With your saw, flip your jig back on the table and push it in until it reaches the stop you just made. Mark the fishing line at the front of the blade and pull it perpendicular to the blade toward the clamp, as shown in the photo below.

Now remove the jig and make a groove, centered on the mowing line you just made, from the side of your clamp to where the blade stops.

I used 1/2″ plywood for my jig, so I made a slot around 3/16″ deep x 3/4″ wide. If you want, you can mark some distance from the blade on your jig.

Make the slide to fit in that groove long enough to just overhang the edge (to make it easier to grip). I cut a 3/4 inch wide piece of wood and sanded it to a smooth fit.

Make sure your slide is flush with the surface of your clamp. Your blank will sit on top of the jig and you don’t want the slide to get in the way.

Finally, drill a hole for the pin at the end of the slide. I used a 1/4″ birch dowel, but if I did it again, I would use a 1/8″ metal dowel because it got smaller and stronger. You need 1/4″ or less protrusion over the surface of the clamping fixture.

Make sure your slide can slide smoothly. That’s it. You’re all set.

To use your clamping tool, set the pin to the radius of the circle and place the hole in the bracket on the back of the workpiece. Attach the workpiece to the pin and gently feed into the blade.

How to cut a hole in chipboard without a jigsaw

Plywood (and to a lesser extent other sheet materials such as particleboard or oriented strand board) has considerable decorative potential. With a simple enough tool and some skill, you can cut almost anything out of plywood. But to make the resulting parts look presentable enough, the craftsman should have a few tricks in reserve. That’s what we’re going to talk about in our article. Curved sawing is difficult only at first glance

Selecting the tool

Beginning to work with sheet materials, many craftsmen only have an idea of how to make a straight cut with a mowing line. Therefore, the question of how to cut an even circle out of plywood may confuse many. Indeed, an ordinary or circular saw is not enough to cope with the task. Figured sawing is most often made with the help of such tools: Manual jigsaw

• Hand-operated jigsaw. The simplest device that is used for sawing. With the jigsaw, even the thinnest work can be done with their own hands, but here for thick material or long cuts it is practically not suitable.
• Electric jigsaws. Here you can use two varieties of devices:

• A regular jigsaw with a vertical saw blade;
• Artistic, in which the role of the cutting element is performed by a steel blade.

Ordinary electric jigsaws you will be useful when working with thick plywood, for example, when making your own hands a bed. But if you are looking for a way to cut letters out of plywood or make other complex elements (for example, parts of a child’s construction set), then it is best to use a model with a band saw. Model for artistic sawing

Tip ! Naturally, there are several varieties of saws and blades for each type of jigsaw. The right choice of cutting element is a prerequisite for high quality products.

• In addition to jigsaws for curvilinear cutting, you can use a furniture router. Despite all the difficulty in operation, the quality of holes it produces is many times superior to most models of saws for plywood. With the help of a router, you can make a wonderful rocking chair out of plywood sheets with your own hands.

Also do not forget about improvised tools, but we will talk about their use in the relevant section.

Tips for cutting plywood

Cutting out of plywood has several nuances that the craftsman needs to consider:

• Firstly, only dry material should be cut. High humidity leads to increased resistance of plywood, so with excessive force, either the veneer will begin to delaminate, or the saw will break.
• Change saw or cutter blade as soon as you see the first signs of bluntness.
• If we’re cutting from plywood with an electric jigsaw, the main mitered cutting lines should be placed along the fibers of the veneer to get cleaner edges. But it is easier to work across the fiber with a hand saw: there will be a few more chips, but there is less risk of jamming the saw or its departure from the planned mowing line.

Advice! When transferring drawings for cutting from plywood to the workpiece, try to place the template in such a way that the elements to be removed fall on the areas with defects: knots, chips, stains, etc.д.

Jigsaw

As we noted above, the jigsaw will come in handy if we are looking for how to cut a word out of plywood or make other details of complex shapes:

• Transfer pre-printed blueprints or templates to the workpiece using copy paper.

• If the structure has through areas. we make thin start holes with a drill.
• Insert a saw or a jigsaw blade into the hole. We fix the free end of the saw with a fixing screw or a clamp.
• Make a kerf along the planned mowing line, pressing the workpiece to the workbench. The saw moves either automatically (for electric shape jigsaws) or manually.

After all arc elements are sawn through, we remove unnecessary areas and process the ready part with a file or emery cloth. Finished hole

Cutter

The furniture router is great for cutting out thick plywood. Of course, you cannot make a complex shape with it, but you can cut an arc or a circle with it:

• Fix the standard ruler, included in the router, in the center of the circle with a self-tapping screw.
• If the length of the ruler is not enough, you can assemble a simple bracket from a metal profile or wooden planks.
• Turning the cutter at a fixed radius, we choose a groove around the circumference, resulting in an almost perfect hole.

Take note! When calculating the diameter of the circle, you must take into account the dimensions of the router. The instructions for the device will tell you the exact numbers.

Not only rounds can be cut out this way, but also individual arcs. for example, to make grooves for furniture brackets.

Using improvised means

For curved elements it is advisable to have special tools, but any craftsman can make a round hole in a board of glued veneer. Below we will tell you how to cut a circle out of plywood, when you have nothing handy. Well, almost nothing:

• For cutting out plywood a wooden plank with two nails is used.
• One nail is hammered through the slat into the workpiece, exactly in the center of the hole to be made.
• Drive the second nail into the strip, so that the nail pins protrude on the underside by at least 5-10mm. The distance from the first nail should be equal to the radius of the hole to be made.
• Turning the bar, we draw a furrow in the plywood with the point, deepening it with each turn.
• Instead of a stick, you can use a strong cord. The working principle remains the same.

The sharper the nail, the faster the hole will be made. It should be noted that although the price of such a device is low, it should be used only when other methods are not available: the edges are still far from ideal.

We hope that thanks to the above information the question of how to cut a figure out of plywood will not cause you difficulties. Of course, shape carving on sheet material requires a certain skill and accuracy, but with the right tools, even a beginner should not have any special difficulties. In the video presented in this article, you will find more information on this topic (also learn how to make a box out of plywood with your own hands).

How to cut a straight circle out of plywood

Plywood, unlike other sheet materials, because of its dense and not loose structure, lends itself to easy sawing and obtaining from it a variety of decorative complex shapes. With a standard set of tools, any home craftsman is able to cut from this material any desired, and even complex elements. However, in order for the workpieces to have a marketable appearance and not to violate the conceived element of the decor, you need to take into account some nuances of working with plywood. How to cut an even circle from plywood?

Circle-cutting with a router

Cutting round shapes out of wood, plywood or chipboard used to be a problematic job. I bought a Bosch Pof 1200 AE milling machine. Certainly, with the help of such machine you can do a lot, but I will stop on circles for now, namely, on cutting out a hole for the speaker.

I got the idea for my work from this article. It tells you very clearly how to make the speaker sampling. I basically did everything the same way, but I changed a few things, and a little bit about those changes.

In my router there is a device to cut circles, but it is only suitable for diameters of 21 cm and even 5 cm in the case of speakers. That’s why I made a special quick overlay. It consists of two parts: 1. base part made of laminate; 2. spacer to hold the screw that sets the radius of the circle, it is made of fiberboard. The overlay is cut for a diameter of up to 23 cm.

The main part with the layer is screwed to the router and the standard cover has to be removed from the router beforehand. Countersunk screws, flush of course. The screw that sets the radius, I also selected with a countersunk and also flush. The bottom of the router without a pad has a ribbed surface and for this, so that our screw that is marking out did not fall out, I put a layer of fiberboard.

Now I would like to dwell on the surface markings for cutting the circle. The proverb “Measure twice, cut once” will be very helpful here. The matter is that it is necessary to expose a cutter (now I mean the cutting element, not the machine itself) not in the center of the outlined circle.

The picture above shows how to cut. For example, you need to cut a round hole (under the speaker) with a diameter of 100 mm, radius 50 mm. The center (our screw), around it the cutting head will rotate, so the center of the future hole coincides with the center of the screw and it does not need to move anywhere, i.e.е. No matter how thick it is, we don’t have to take that into account. But the cutter head, in my case has a diameter of 8 mm, and if you set it on the scythe line of the marking, we end up with a hole greater than we need, namely: cutter 8/2=4 mm, radius 504=54 mm, diameter 5454=108 mm. To avoid this, I set the calculated distance taking into account the diameter of the cutter: cutter size 8/2=4 mm, radius 50-4=46 mm. The distance between the center of the set screw and the center of the cutter will be 46 mm. As a result we get the diameter of 100 mm. 4646=92, 928mm cutter = 100mm. If you need to cut a circle, and not a hole, the scheme is the same, but you need to calculate on the contrary with a reserve.

Article specially prepared for the site.Author: LDS, 2014

Master carves perfect circles with a jigsaw

The jigsaw is a very useful power tool. Using the right saw, a little experience and confidence, and most importantly the right body position, you can do everything with it. You can do many things that cannot be done with other tools. The machine is used to cut straight lines, curves, profiles and circle trimming. Great for cutting wood, metal and plastic.

A craftsman showed how to cut a perfect circle with an electric jigsaw. He made the fixture out of wood. Its design is unpretentious and the device itself is simple to build. To get an idea of this, see this image.

12 mm plywood sheet. Wooden strip. Nailing.

First of all, measure the size of the base plate of the jigsaw machine. The next step is to cut the plywood sheet into an L shape, as shown in the image.

After cutting a sheet of plywood to the exact size, the next step is to cut a wooden strip to attach this sheet with nails. This strip is used to hold the jigsaw in its position.

Make sure that there should not be any type of gap between the strip and the base plate of the electric jigsaw.

The next step is to drill small holes in the sheet. The distance between these holes is 1o cm, for example. These holes are used to cut different diameter circles.

After that, painted it so that it looks good. It is now ready to be used to cut a perfect clamping circle.

It is used for circular blades of different diameters.

How To Cut Perfect circle Jig By Jigsaw Machine || Jigsaw Trick/Hack

For a better understanding see the video below.

How to cut the material without chipping

To avoid the appearance of such defects, it is advisable to consider the following recommendations:

• Based on the cutting drawing and the dimensions of the selected tool, the stop rail is set. It will avoid oscillation of the cutting device, which will reduce the number of damages.
• If the work is carried out with a hand-held circular saw, the output of the teeth is minimized. As a result of the adjustment, the sawing part should not protrude more than 5 mm.
• To make the edge without chipping, a special tape is glued over the mowing line. This reduces splitting, but does not guarantee that it will be free from defects. An alternative option is to wet the upper section, but because of the moisture resistance of the material, it will not be possible to achieve the desired effect.
• The cutter is brought to the place of the beginning of the process in the switched on condition, because when you start directly at the edge the teeth tear the wood fibres.
• The movement of the tool should be steady, too much pressure creates fractures and burnt areas. If you move very slowly, you will get marks in the surface as a result of constant penetrations.

The type of plywood is not unimportant. Laminated versions are the hardest to process: chipping can be completely eliminated only on a format-cutting machine, where trimming is performed from above and below. It is possible to minimize damages, if you choose the front side at once and make a test saw on a piece. This will determine the correct position of the sheet in relation to the cutting part.