Well, I just made a giant beam compass.
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Whenever I need to draw circles, I go to a compass. Something like this that can
scribe is great because it's not just a compass, but you could use it as a scribe
along the wall for some kind of a cabinet install.
But anyway, there is a small range of diameters you can get with
a tool like this. Now if you make something bigger in the same
format it gets a little bit clunky, kind of hard to use
and you really are limited in the sizes you can make with it.
But this is pretty good for most small circles
and when you want to go a little bit bigger you have to go to
something a little bit more like this. This is a beam compass
that's kind of been taken apart and salvaged for pieces.
But this is what I've used in the past. You don't even need something
like this. You just really need maybe a length of wood,
a dowel rod, a pencil, some tape to hold it on there
and a pin on the other end and you could really cobble something
together if it's just a one off thing. But I wanted to make a beam
compass that was a little bit more like an heirloom tool.
I just thought it would be a fun project, definitely overkill
for what it is. But this is what I came up with.
This is a beam compass inspired by an article I found on the wood
smith magazine or the woodsmith website that has an aluminum core.
It's got a walnut skin on the outside with a movable portion with
the pin that slides along the shaft, tighten it down
and you can put that pin wherever you need it to be.
And then on the other end we have room for a pencil to just simply
drop in and get tightened up with that knob.
Very simple little system, but there's quite a bit of work
that goes into it. So hopefully you enjoy watching this come together.
So the first step is to cut down some walnut for the outer skins
and the inner filler pieces. By the way while I don't have a set
of plans available for this, I do have my initial Sketchup model
if you want to download it for your own use the model isn't perfect,
but it's pretty darn close to what I actually made.
The walnut skins are cut to about an eighth of an inch in thickness
and then they're drum sanded to final thickness.
This is actually a pretty critical step because we need the walnut
and aluminum sandwich to be the same thickness as the half inch
square aluminum stock to understand why, keep watching. Before
gluing the little beams sandwich together.
I'll lightly sand the aluminum to not only clean the surface,
but to give the glue something to bite into.
You can see that I intentionally cut the walnut skin just a little
bit wider than the aluminum core. This will allow me to flush
it up after the glue dries. I also use a little spacer to help
keep the skins centered with an overhang on both edges.
And now for the epoxy. Little known fact, epoxy can actually be
used as an adhesive. Adding a high density filler
gives it a little bit more strength and helps thicken it up a bit,
making it stay where I put it. I then paint the epoxy onto both
the walnut and the aluminum. I don't think Nicole has once touched
any of my ****. Either she's intimidated by it or doesn't care.
Whoa! Hold on guys, I said grills she doesn't touch my grills.
This is the problem when you hire an editor
that has as bad of a sense of humor as you do.
I don't mean to brag, but I'm kind of a professional.
The strips of plywood will help distribute the pressure along
the beam and some packing tape on the surface of the plywood helps
protect it from glue squeeze out. We got them may as well use
them. The smaller strip is what we use to make the movable pin
and the pencil holder so they only get one strip of walnut
and one strip of aluminum. We'll glue it as one big piece
and then cut it into smaller pieces later.
Even with the tape in place, the cauls want to stick a bit,
but it's not too hard to pry them apart. Please don't break.
Take it slow. Take it slow. There we go. Now
we just need to flush the wood up to the aluminum.
I'll use the block plane for the bulk of the removal followed
up with some sanding and scraping
at the miter saw. I've switched to a blade that's designed for
non ferrous metals. I'm using a stop block
and a little auxiliary piece to ensure that I have zero clearance
during the cut.
And now I can cut a piece of the half inch aluminum stock to a
length that matches the width of the walnut aluminum sandwich
by the way, see all those shards of aluminum.
You can't see my face here, but I'm obviously wearing safety glasses.
Getting one of those pieces in your eye can really ruin your day
or your year, depending on how bad it is. Now I'm drum sanding
the half inch walnut piece so that it's the same dimension as
the aluminum stock. Well, I just came all the way out into the
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you started so there's no risk. Head to woodwhispererguild.com
for more info. Two of the pieces will receive knurled knobs
so I'll drill a through hole and then tap the threads.
Okay To construct the sliding pin and the pencil holder,
I'll use a combination of quick drying CA glue
and epoxy. The CA glue will cure quickly helping to lock the
pieces in position. Then I can apply some clamps.
Now I could use epoxy and clamps alone but it's really going to
be difficult to keep the pieces from sliding around.
So this method works pretty well as I hold the pieces in position
just long enough for the CA glue to set.
Now watch very closely what's happening here.
The aluminum is supposed to face the inside.
I don't know if this happens to you, but there are times
and projects where I can't see the forest for the trees or I almost
have some kind of blinders on where I don't catch an incredibly
obvious mistake like this. I'm so focused on
that glue and getting these pieces position correctly
that I completely spaced on which side was facing out.
I didn't even notice it. So I just set the piece aside to cure
and then moved on to the pencil holder and look what I'm doing.
I'm doing it again. Okay. Only I actually noticed this one
and I was able to pull the pieces apart and then glue them back
together the correct way. Okay, try that again,
looks like it's supposed to look. Yeah, it wasn't until the next
morning that I realized the mistake I made on the first one.
Unfortunately, this one had already surrendered to the sweet embrace
of the epoxy and needed to be destructively dismantled.
Now I'm only going to sacrifice one side here so I'll try to keep
the other side fully intact. I'll use whatever tools needed to
clean up the glue and get this thing ready for a new side.
Fortunately I had just enough left over, walnut
and aluminum to cut one new piece and now a glue do over so the
wood side down right like this. Hold on like this.
Look, you've got to have a sense of humor about these things,
mistakes happen and nobody's perfect. Now while the epoxy cures
on those pieces, I'll go back to the beam
and clean up one end. On the pencil end I'm actually intentionally
leaving the wood veneer just a little bit proud so
that it creates a cradle for the pencil championing the inside
edges will help prevent any splintering and really give the pencil
a nice home to nestle into regardless of the pencil shape. At the
disk sander, I'll proceed to destroy the sandpaper by using it
to do the final shaping and leveling. Once cleaned up,
I can use sandpaper on the jointer bed to work up through the
grits so that there's really no visible scratch pattern on the aluminum
I need to drill a hole for the pencil so that it can be inserted
from the top to locate the hole. I'll use a pencil to make a mark
and then drill a pilot hole from the inside.
Then I can use a bigger bit to make the clearance hole needed
for the pencil.
Now I'll just add some decorative shaping to the pencil holder
and the moveable pin. A word of warning here,
the metal can get super hot. This is exacerbated by the fact
that you can't really feel how hot it is when your fingers are
touching the walnut. So if you're using a power sander like this,
give the piece plenty of time to cool. Really
every few seconds you want to pull it away
and get it on a cold portion of the cast iron.
Now this looks scarier than it is,
but I'm just adding a little chamfer detail to the wood.
So the truth is, I really don't know how well the epoxy
and the walnut bond will fare over time. So,
to stack the cards in my favor, I'm drilling for 1/8 inch aluminum
pins. I'm placing the holes wherever I have a decent amount of
material to go through. And I'm not really concerned with the
actual pattern itself. With the epoxy in the hole,
I can drive the aluminum pins.
And what the heck while I'm at it. I may as well put some pins
into the beam. Now, I didn't do it on this version of the tool,
but what would be a really sweet upgrade would be to place those
pins, maybe every inch along the length of the beam could be a
good way to get an approximate length setting.
And now I can take care of the pins in the pencil holder.
All the pins are flushed up with a file and then cleaned up a
little bit further with sandpaper. The movable pin piece needs
a hole for the pin itself, which I can make at the drill press
and then I'll add a little bit of rounding on the top to finish it off.
Once again, a light chamfer at the router table.
Oh yeah. Gotta flush these other pins too.
To attach the pencil holder. I'll add some epoxy
and clamp the thing in place, making sure
that the pencil has some room to move the knurled knob will press
the pencil up against the beam so it doesn't need to be a piston
fit. After the epoxy dries, I'll add two more pins to help lock
it down onto the beam. I used epoxy before,
but really there's no reason that I can't
use CA glue for these pins too.
The pencil hole needs a little bit of love,
so I'll take a few spins with a counter sink bit
and that should give it a little bit more of a finished look.
And speaking of finished, let's apply some finish.
I'm using a tung oil mixture here since filming this segment,
I've really taken a liking to the all natural finishes sold by
bumblechutes. There would finish is the perfect mixture of tung
oil and citrus solvent. So if you don't wanna mix your own,
use my code TWW10 at checkout and you can get 10% off. Now
for the final assembly.
And there it is.
I don't know who's going to make something like this or even who
needs something like this, but my gosh, was it a lot of fun
and it's definitely gonna come in handy whenever I need these
large circles, large arcs, it's gonna be a fun tool to use.
Thanks for watching. I'm drawing circles, I'm drawing rainbows.
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