Cutting small parts without cutting me..........

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Last June I bumped into our former (retired) family dentist. He said he'd heard I was a woodworker and he was wanting some help with a project. He showed me a rosary he had in his pocket. He asked if I thought I could cut the parts for the wooden cross. He wanted to make rosaries as gifts to family members, friends and donations at his church. I looked at it and said I thought I could come up with what he needed. He indicated he was going to spend the summer in Montana fly fishing ( I gave him no sympathy!). He said he'd call me when he got back.

The 2 pieces of the cross are 5/16" wide, 3/16" thick. One piece is 1 1/8" long....the other piece is 1 7/8" long.

I thought I could cut them in a similar fashion as I cut plugs to plug holes......ripping, and cutting on the face of piece of wood...then stand the block on edge and ripping them free. It worked but getting a consistent depth due to having to move the t/s fence produced a lot of failures and a very low success rate.

I take two woodworking magazines....FWW and Woodsmith. I found a free plan for a jig at the Woodsmith website. It basically serves as a stop to set the width of the rip and you don't have to rely on measuring each time you move the fence. I spent Tuesday running around town looking unsuccessfully for the parts. I ordered what I needed from McMaster-Carr and found some usable temporary substitutes at my local Ace Hardware.

Yesterday I spent the day assembling the jig only to find out I couldn't get repetitive thicknesses. I was stumped.

Last night I studied the problem a little closer and decided to check the alignment on my t/s fence and to change my technique a little by using less pressure when sliding the fence and the material up to the jig.

Today after aligning the fence, changing my technique....it worked great. I was ripping 3/16" pieces with no problem.

Then I made a zero clearance backstop/table top for my SCMS. I was able to accurately cut off the 3/16"x 5/16" pieces without any chip out while keeping fingers away from the blade.

Tomorrow I will make a sled to notch the pieces with a notch 5/16" wide and 3/32" deep......

Then start producing some pieces for him........

Jigs for repetitive accuracy and safety!
 
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Grab some photos of the jigs (and the project, too) if you get a chance. I'd like to see them.

...Jigs for repetitive accuracy and safety!

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I have done this with something similar. Cut a cross shaped hole out of a board the size of a push block/stick. Cut the crosses out a a thick block the size of the hole. Set your blade for the thickness you want the cross to be. Insert the cross block into the cross hole and feed it into the saw. The result will be just like a meat slicer. Use a scrap board to keep the cross into the hole as you are feeding it. You should be able to get at least 5 out of each 8/4 cross stock. If you want to get real fancy, glue multiple pieces of thin stock together. It's a cool effect.
Mike (the lurker)
 
Mike........without my hardware I can't hear anything.... I am deaf and have a cochlear implant for my left ear. I wear the most powerful hearing aid on my right ear but it helps very little. I can function with just the cochlear implant....I can't function with just the hearing aid.
 
Well.....First I ripped stock to 3/8" thick and planed to 5/16" final thickness. I ripped the planed stock to 3/16" thick strips.........I made a thinstock ripping jig based on a Woodsmith plan. Then I built a small parts sled for my table saw, installed some t-track, a stop block and some hold down clips. I made some gauge blocks to eliminate measuring. Using the sled, I dadoed the half-lap joints and cut the pieces to length.

My friend assembled the crosses, drilled a hole for the string, stained and finished them. Next he glues on the corpus. He buys bulk quantity wooden beads, and strings them.

My Mother-In-Law is always interested in my woodworking projects and wanted to see one of the finished crosses so my friend dropped by with this one to give to her.

Here's my smallest woodworking project and yet, to do it safely took a lot of planning and experimentation. (This from the guy who had his 14 stitches removed today from his router wound. :D)

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