My Spoke Wheel Drilling Jig - UPDATE

Paul Douglass

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I want to be able to make spoke wheels for models. Was thinking of doing it on the lathe, making a jig to hold a drill and using the lathe indexer. Looking at the ones I was directed to on the internet, they can be a little complicated. Then I saw a picture on LJ of a jig a model build made to use on the drill press. Looking a the picture, it looked pretty simple to make and use. I made this one. I think the hardest part is going to be centering the blank with the drill bit. I will give it a try tomorrow. The jig was simple to build. I did 24 index holes because that is what my lathe would have had. If I need to make a wheel that uses, say, 16 spokes then I will have to make another wheel to handle it. May just make one anyway just in case. Sure hope it works.

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Very cool Paul, that would come in handy for sure on other projects. Was thinking the other day about some of the toys I had growing up. One was tinker toys, which that jig would also work for. :thumb:
 
Looking good Paul, nice job on the jig. :thumb: You apparently have a good eye for centering the drill to the blank.

One thing you could do to help would be to establish the front to back center as accurately as you can & then scribe a reference line directly onto the drill press table along the rear edge of the jig base. Then you could use the reference line to visually position the jig in the future, or clamp a block to the line to butt up against. Since centering left to right varies with the thickness of the blank, that would probably remain an "eyeball", unless you want to get more complicated using pre-made spacers for different blank thicknesses.
 
After laying in bed last night trying to breath, what a cold I have, I was also thinking about the jig. Maybe rebuild it. On mine, there is a lot of work to put the blank on and take it off. I have to un-thread the rod that goes through the uprights. If I remade it so the wheel was attached on the outside of the uprights, so to speak, there would only be one bolt to take on and off to put the blank on or take it off. Duh...:doh:
 
Re: My Spoke Wheel Drilling Jig

Well done Paul. Making jigs in my view is as much fun as making the component or project it goes on. I get bigger kicks out of jigs than the project. Its like making tools.
Think you will get a lot of pleasure from this one.
And hey i too would not have rested having got it complete without testing. :thumbup:

sent from s4
 
Okay, my new spoke wheel jig. Really, time to stop playing around with the jig and get to using it. For the stand and jack I used some yellowheart I've had for a long time. You ask, why the spiraling on the jack. Well I bought a spiral cutter for my lathe, probably 5 years ago and have never tried it. I just could not resist. I got the numbers stamped on the index wheel and only screwed up one. Not bad for an old gummer.

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I just love this kind of ingenuity.

I can see definite use for this in the future.

A jig of this sort even has application on my CNC machine.

With a little more modification - A hand held router could be used to rout pockets - or flats at the indexed position.

My machine is 3 axis - but this jig design can add a 4-th - dimension.
This would make 4 sided - and beyond - easy.

What an awesome thread.
 
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