Best / fastest way to cut several archs

[jason lambert]

I need to cut several archs in 3" x 3/4 popular. Kind of what you see on the top of a raised pannel arch door. What is the easey/fastest way to do this, they need to be same to the eye but high persicion is not necessary. I have a jug saw, scroll saw, router, (sorry no band saw).

[Quinn McCarthy]

Jason

Here is what I would do.

Make a template for your router out of plywood or mdf the shape of the arch you want to produce. Make sure the template is nice and smooth and loks good to the eye. Then take your template and put it of the door and draw the arc on the door. Then rough that arc in using your jigsaw to within an 1/8"-1/4" from the line. Then clamp your template to the door and use a spiral template router bit to clean up the edge.

Hope that helps.

Quinn

[Joe Chritz]

What Quinn said. The closer you can cut to the line with the jigsaw the easier the routing will go.

Be sure your jigsaw runs true and is cutting a true 90 degrees or you could accidentally cut to much on the back side. I learned that one the hard way. :mad:

Joe

[jason lambert]

Festool jisg saw, just replaced my Bosh which is for sale. If it does one thing well is it does hold the blade stright.

[David DeCristoforo]

If the arch is to be a "true radius", the best thing would be to make a simple compass base for your router and use that with a straight cutter to make your template. Then use the template with a flush trim bit to make your remaining arch pieces. You can use the jig saw to rough cut the arches and the router and template to finish. Cutting the arches "to the line" with a hand held jig saw is unlikely to yield "matching" pieces.

[Mike Cutler]

Yep. Template route the arches. Only difference of opinion I have is that I prefer MDF for templates. Much, much easier to shape than plywood.

The more time you spend on the template, the less time you will have to spend on the finished piece. If I had to make a lot of them though, I would make the MDF template, then a plywood template from the MDF template for better wear resistance.