Best Way to Cut an Oval || Cool Router Jig

this video was sponsored by policy genius what's up in this video you kinda are gonna get a twofer because i'm gonna show you how to do two different things a while back i had a friend of mine bring me a massive glued together two by force he was trying to make a table top and he needed a little help first of all the mass of two by fours wasn't square it wasn't flat it wasn't ready to work whatsoever and it was too big for my planer so i'm going to show you how i take a rough piece of slab together two by fours and make them flat but you could use that for any table top you want and then i'm going to show you how i made this sweet elliptical jig to cut out a perfect ellipse it's completely made of plywood and a few other doohickeys it's super easy so watch the video follow along and make your own jig and flatten your own slab it two by fours also check the video description for links to all the products you see me use in this video and if you feel like it you could follow me on instagram or support me over on patreon yeah i think that's it let's do it [Music] i like to think i've got great friends which means they should give great gifts but every once in a while all they give you is a giant hunka glued together two by force what the heck is this thing long story short a friend of mine glued up a bunch of scrap two by fours he had laying around and then very kindly asked if i could cut an ellipse out of it for him the only problem is when he brought it to me it was all bowed and curved and not square and not flat so the first thing i had to do was figure out how to get this giant massive construction grade lumber flat and level and at a place that we could even start to cut out an ellipse i measured it and wouldn't you know it's too big for my planer that would have been too easy so we're gonna have to come up with another solution now if you ever find yourself in this predicament where you need to flatten a slab and it is too big for your machinery there is another somewhat simple solution and that is to make a router sled so that's what i'm gonna do here i start by ripping down some pieces of three-quarter inch plywood you really just want to rip these down so they stick up just above whatever slab you're flattening or make them really big and raise up your slab and then they're kind of universal and you can use them over and over again i'll leave that choice up to you so after ripping down four pieces of the same height i glue them together in little 90 degree l shaped long pieces and then i tack them together with a few 16 gauge finishing nails just like this what you're going for here is two identical pieces that you can set on either side of your slab and act as rails for your router sled to ride along if we're working with rails don't you guys think it should be called a router train instead of a router sled i'm changing it henceforth it shall be known as the router train all aboard i crack myself up with our rails for our router train created i clamp them down to either side of my table now you could make this a whole separate little thing with a plywood base but i have these tables so i'm just going to go with it after clamping them to the table i double check that there's no bow in my rail any bow or inaccuracies in our rail is going to be transferred onto our slab when we start running the router across so after making sure that they were flat all across the top i make sure they're level from left to right then i grab the router that i will be using to flatten this slab and i measure the base of it and i cut out a piece of three quarter inch plywood that is the exact width of the base actually that's not exactly true i made it a 16th of an inch larger so that the router wouldn't get wedged in the sled as i'm dragging it back and forth anyways we'll get to that next i take some more scrap pieces of plywood and i tack them on either end these are the exact same width as the base and then i add a few more scrap pieces of ply just on either side of the sled this is just to make the router not fall off that just seemed like common sense i mean you don't want your router falling off while you're using it that sounds a little scary and presto i have a router train to ride on top of my router rails as you can see here so with our train car all put together i plop the router in place and just double check that it will slide freely back and forth within the confines of the train car next i turn the router on and lower the bit just above the slab to carve out a nice groove in the bottom of our train car this will just allow the blade to pass through and come in contact with the slab with that done it is time to start milling up our slab but first i decided to coat the entire inside of the train car with a little paste wax just to ensure that that router slides nice and smooth back and forth the way that it was intended to is the fact that i keep calling it a train car annoying you or is it just me it's really annoying the crap out of me so i'm gonna switch back to sled now if you don't mind with our sled all put together the next thing you have to do is find the lowest point of your slab this is what you want to mill everything to so that you remove the least amount of material so i did a little looking around and once i found the lowest point i lowered my blade and i set a stop then i turn the router on and it's as simple as just running the router back and forth across your piece moving your way down the tracks and removing all of the material until the top of the slab is nice and flat as you can see me doing here back and forth and back and forth now i should have been using a different bit but i wasn't planning to make a router sled and do the flattening and all that i assumed my friend would have glued up the thing correctly in the first place so i just went with the bit i had they make much larger bits for this purpose that would have taken a lot less time but you just go with what you have in the shop sometimes and in no time i had the entire top of the slab perfectly flat cut too dramatic shot of me blowing off the insane amount of sawdust i just created okay that's enough dramatic footage for this video with one side of our slab nice and flat we can flip it over and yes do the other side and i have a feeling the other side is gonna look terrific terrifically horrific if that's a thing this is obviously the ugly side but we'll fix that in no time so we flip the slab over now we got a nice flat surface to reference off of our table and we kind of clamp it in place with a few of these dog hole block thingamabobs i made and once it's sandwiched nice and tight in between those we can grab our router sled and go to town on this side oh yeah we also have to find the lowest point on this side of the slab to reference our router bit off of so we go ahead and do that and then then we start cutting now this side was much uglier than the other side but the nice thing about router sleds is when you have an ugly side that you're dealing with it is just that much more gratifying to run that router across and make it nice and smooth so back and forth and back and forth i went until i had that entire surface of the slab nice and flat man this seems like a lot of work just to be able to start the work which is cutting the thing into an ellipse but don't worry we're getting there just be patient that's the next step as you can see after using the router sled on both sides we have a perfectly flat and flush slab for which we can work from gosh two by fours are freaking heavy man no wonder houses are so hard to pick up anywho after getting it out of my router sled i brought it over to my other table and it was time to start my favorite thing of all time oh hell's bells i forgot about the sanding i thought we were going to cut the ellipse out anyways before i started cutting the ellipse i decided to sand down both the top and bottom surface so that we had a nice smooth area from which to work so i did one side then i flipped it over and did the other side all right enough of the sanding we don't need to watch this garbage oh don't mind me i'm just shopping for life insurance i know sounds pretty terrible doesn't it lucky for you guys there's policy genius policy genius makes it easy to compare quotes from over a dozen top insurers all in one place you can save fifty percent or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with policy genius do you realize that you could save thirteen hundred dollars or more per year on life insurance by using policy genius to compare policies policy genius is an insurance marketplace not to be confused with an insurance company which means that you can get personalized rates from top competitors in a matter of minutes don't believe me show you super easy password one two three four we're in all you do is go to policygenius.com fill out some basic information and wait for your quote yep that's it well that didn't take long and you know what it it didn't even it didn't even hurt so here's what you're going to want to do head to policygenius.com bourbon moth to get started now because when it comes to insurance it's nice to get it right i mean i did it so it's got to be pretty simple now if you're unfamiliar with what an elliptical jig looks like here's one that you can purchase on rockler.com i will leave a link in the video description this is a great little elliptical jig for cutting out picture frames or cutting boards the only issue is it doesn't cut out large surfaces it's a little small as you can see it's got this x y axis with two pivot points and as it spins it goes in and out by some form of mathematics i can't comprehend and cuts in a perfect ellipse so this is what we're going to try and recreate only bigger let's get started now the first thing we have to do is determine how big our jig needs to be now we wanted to cut out as big of an ellipse as we possibly can so i measure the width of our slab that's what we're going to base the dimensions of our jig off of so i run a piece through that's the exact width of our slab and i make sure that it is a perfect square this will help us reference all of the things we need to line up here in just a moment after we have our perfect square cut out i go plop it on my slab just to make sure it fits i said it was the exact width but to be honest i left it about a quarter of an inch shy just so we could have room to actually get to the slab and cut it out next we needed to make our xy top pattern thing so i set my saw blade to 13 degrees and i ripped down a piece of plywood i just forgot to press play on the camera so you didn't see that part after i cut down a 13 degree angle on one side of the plywood i cut that piece of plywood again into perfect squares making sure that i had four of them with all four of my squares cut out i went back over the table saw and i cut another 13 degree angle so that each square had a 13 degree angle bevel cut on two of the four sides this bevel is very important because it locks in our little internal pivot point sliding things that we're gonna make here in just a second as you can see the bevel starts at the base and points out towards the top this will create a little dovetail that we can slide our pivoty point thingamabobs in you know i don't know the technical terms for any of this but i do know how it works so just trust me it should look something like this you got your x-axis and your y-axis i don't know which is which but i think there's an x and y axis next we have to cut some pieces that look like this they'll be the dovetail to go inside of our little dovetail groove so once again we go back over to the table saw and using the piece that i already cut at 13 degrees i run it through again this time adding a 13 degree bevel to the opposite side making essentially a dovetail out of the long strip of plywood then i cut this piece of plywood down not to our small pieces yet but into some longer strips before we cut out our small sliding pieces we're going to use these longer strips to make sure that we get everything lined up the way we should so i cut one longer strip and two smaller strips then i take them back over to my jig and i plop the longer strip in place going all the way across and then i plop my two smaller strips in place this will ensure that everything is lined up perfect so that when we get this all hooked together things will slide the way they're supposed to and you'll have a nice functioning smoothly working jig if that made any sense at all gosh i hope it did now the first thing we're going to do is glue up these two bottom pieces now we know that our base is perfectly square so we're going to use the edge of our base as a reference to make sure that these two bottom pieces are perfectly square and in line with one another now this is a jig which means you don't have to get too crazy hooking it together for this purpose i'm just going to use some ca glue and the accelerator spray so i slather on a good amount of the ca glue i take the excel accelerator accelerator spray that's it and i spray the base of the jig then i plop my first piece down making sure that it is perfectly lined up with the bottom of that piece of plywood you only got a short period of time to work with that ca glue so make sure you don't mess it up too bad then with our first piece glued down we're going to re-insert that dovetailed strip we made and we're going to glue down our second piece making sure this piece is also perfectly lined up with that piece of plywood on the bottom this will make sure that both pieces left to right are in a line and our jig will work properly once we get that piece glued down then we can start gluing down our other two pieces making sure that each piece you glue down is tight against those little dovetail spacer blocks that will eventually become our slidey doohickey thingamabobs the goal here is to have your x and y axis perfectly in align with one another so that the pieces can slide freely it's also a good idea that as you glue down each piece you just double check and make sure that you don't have them so tight that those pieces are unable to slide you know when i'm tight but not too tight but not too loose you get what i'm saying right just so they slide real nice like you can see me doing here but just a warning these are really fun to slide back and forth so you can kind of get trapped just sliding them in and out all day long if you're not careful now with all of your pieces glued down we have to cut down this jig a little bit because right now it will run into our router as we try and cut out the ellipse so taking a ruler i draw a line from point to point from x-axis to y-axis to x-x i don't even know what i'm saying i don't know which one's the x and y you get what i'm saying you're just gonna chop off all the corners this will make sure that your router can spin freely and you can cut out your lips so after we mark out all the corners that need to be chopped down i take the whole thing over to the bandsaw and i just free hand them it's a jig it doesn't have to look pretty it's just got to be functional so chop chop chop you remove every single corner and now you have what is kind of like a perfect square with an x in the middle and that's how it should look now i know i said you can just attach these using ca glue and the accelerator spray but the last thing you want is one of those pieces to pop off while you're running the router through your jig so for a little added assurance i just take a little brad nailer and i tap some nails in from the back just to make sure everything stays put and then i run all those pieces back in one more time this isn't necessary at all it's just really fun to do now it's finally time to chop down our spacer dovetail pieces into smaller little pieces that will act as our slidey pivot point things so i marked them out i don't know if they need to be a certain length i just made these about two and a half inches long so i went over the chop saw and i cut two pieces at two and a half inches long i mean you don't want them too long i would imagine but you don't want them too short either so let's just go with two and a half inches that seems right and i tried to slide them through but as you can see they got hung up in the middle a little bit it's because it was a little too precise so they had to fit perfect or they wouldn't fit at all so after struggling to get them to fit across that middle section i decided to take a little sandpaper and just soften all those internal edges and those hard points in the center of the jig i figured if i just rounded them over slightly it would allow the pieces to run smoothly and not get hung up i also did the same thing to the sliding doohickeys as well and then re-inserted them and what do you know that did the trick and they were sliding smoothly man i could literally do this all day long but we don't have time for that next we have to figure out the arm that our router will attach to now rockler makes this awesome circle cutting jig but it's a little too short so i had an extra one of those laying around and i decided to just chop the end off and then i can add some length to it you could totally make one of these completely out of plywood but this one's already ready to go with the pre-drilled holes and i'm lazy so i'm just gonna go with it next i cut down a longer strip of plywood and i took my decapitated rockler jig and i marked the end of my plywood to determine where i wanted that to land then i wanted to recess the decapitated jig into the piece of plywood so i marked the depth onto the end of the plywood itself then i took the entire thing over to my chop saw and using the trenching feature i just removed about a quarter of an inch which was the ultimate thickness of that rockler jig now that that's removed the jig can sit nicely on the end of this piece of plywood and be flush on the bottom which is the most important part that's how i found my wife actually then finally we had to figure out a way to attach the decapitated jig to our piece of plywood so i marked out the center of my piece of plywood just in some random places no need for precision here then i took the whole thing over to my drill press and i drilled out two quarter inch holes yes i'm aware my drill bit is bent and wobbling around like a crazy person with my quarter inch holes drilled i attached the decapitated jig to my plywood using a few of these t-bolts and i got all this hardware on rockler.com i mean i figured i owed them one after cutting their jig into pieces but i'll put links to all this hardware in the video description below with my bolts in place i just added the knobs and i tightened the whole thing down we were one step closer to making this jig a reality after plopping my router arm in place i liked it but there's one thing i didn't like the end of it just kind of hung out in space so i took one of the offcuts from my center jig and i realized it would work perfect as a little spacer block to keep my router arm level with that center jig so i just traced out the shape of the end of my rockler jig and i cut it out over on the bandsaw then before attaching that spacer block i decided to attach my router base to the jig itself because my spacer block may or may not have covered up one of the mounting screws but that's okay if i ever need to get my router base off i can just pull this spacer block off i mean i'm just holding it on with a little super glue and i glue things to my router jigs all the time so just calm down i also inserted a few screws just to make sure it stayed in place and didn't ruin a wonderful woodworking experience and come flying off at some random point with our router arm all situated the next thing we had to do is attach our router arm to our little pivot points so i had to figure out a way to attach these little blocks to our router arm but do so in a way that would still allow them to move freely and not be too tight and get locked in our little dovetail groove so this is what i came up with now the t-knobs that i use to attach the router jig to the top they have this hole so the bolt goes all the way through i found these ones that don't have a hole which means that you can tighten them just to a certain point but not over tighten them i thought these would be perfect to attach our little pivot point slider blocks to our router arm because i could cut the bolt to a height that they would just barely be on there locking the arm in place but not tightening it so much that the whole thing wouldn't move around anymore did that make sense i don't know if that made sense it'll make sense in a second when you actually see it so maybe i could hurry up with the flipping drill press and get onto the action shots all right we get it you countersunk some holes in the bottom of each piece so you could slide the bolts in there and they wouldn't drag along the bottom of the jig okay let's move on next because i love paste wax so much and i like things sliding really smooth i'm not gonna wander down that path any farther i will just say that i lubed everything up with a healthy coating of paste wax so that it would all ride smoothly within the confines of the jig people then in order to determine where our pivot points need to be on our router arm we first need to lock our base plate in place this way we know exactly how far out the router arm needs to stick on the sides and on either end so i drew a line down the center of our slab to find the middle then i lined up our base plate and i countersunk some holes on either side i'm cutting this whole thing out from the bottom of the slab so i was okay putting a few holes in it if you don't want to put holes in your piece you could use double-sided tape that would work just as well well not just as well it could pop off of there so screws are better but hey i don't want to tell you how you should be doing things no actually i do that's the whole point of this video just screw it down no one's going to see the bottom this is how we determine our length and width our width is from the center point out our length is from the center point to the left or right so when you're setting your pins to get the biggest ellipse that you can you set that middle pin and then you set your router arm next to it extend your router so that it's just on the edge of your slab as you can see here then with your second pin you pull that all the way back until it's as far out as it can be and still ride within the jig mark both of your points and drill out your holes now obviously if you want a bigger ellipse you got to make a bigger jig or draw your holes in different places you could drill a zillion holes down the center of this thing and then you could kind of adjust and figure it out that way but i just needed to cut one ellipse so i just drilled two holes but you do whatever works well for you with my two holes drilled i slid my router arm over both those little pivot points and i attached each one with my t-knobs that don't have a hole in the top so they stop as soon as they get to that router arm and of course i will also include a link to these in the video description with my router arm in place you can finally see how the jig is gonna work it spins around doing some geometrical acrobatics and it spins in a perfect ellipse the only problem was the arm was a little long so it kept hitting me and my family area so i decided to cut it down a little shorter there's no reason to whack yourself on every rotation with it cut down a little shorter i plopped it back in place and we were ready to go i'm not lying when i say i could watch this thing move all day long there's just something so hypnotizing about its motion it looks like it shouldn't work but it works so well there's only one thing left to do and that was to plop a router in this puppy and start cutting now typically when i'm doing any sort of circle jig or lips jig my go-to bit is a spiral down cut bit quarter inch i just think they work the best so i put one of those in the router and next i rig up my cord to the ceiling here's another thing i always do when i'm using jigs like this that way as you spin the jig around and around you're not fighting your cord the entire time it just makes life so much easier with that all hooked up all i had to do was turn my router on and start working my way around the perimeter of my ellipse just letting the jig do its thing don't put too much pressure on any one point just pull the router through the jig nice and slow like a choreographed dance like a i'm running out of choreographed things to compare it to um like a like what would be a good thing like um like a the ocean or um birds maybe something to do with birds like floating flying you get the picture it's it's moving really nice around there cutting a perfect ellipse and in no time we have our oval all the way cut out well actually that's an absolute lie because this slab was made of glued up two by fours it's pretty thick and my bit wasn't long enough to cut it completely out so i cut it as deep as i could and then i finished off the rest of it with the jigsaw now don't worry i'm not doing my final cut with the jigsaw i'm cutting inside that quarter inch groove just so i can separate the ellipse from the rest of the material then using the passes from our jig as a template i will clean this entire thing up over on the router table with a honking huge spiral down cut top mounted bearing flush cut bit that was a mouthful i got this one at bits and bits and yes i will leave a link in the video description as you can see running that soft fur through that flush cut bit was like running a hot knife through cold snow it was actually very enjoyable to flush cut this smooth and in no time i had it complete what do you know for a hunk of two by fours it doesn't look half bad yeah [Music] and the very last thing i did just to try and be a good friend was add a round over to the top and bottom just to soften that edge a bit well there you have it looking at this beautiful ellipse you would hardly be able to tell that this was an ugly glued together hunk of two by fours when we started now this wouldn't be my preferred choice for a tabletop but i was trying to help a friend out so you just shut up and say yes when it comes to your friends that's loyalty hope you enjoyed this video be sure to check out the video descriptions for links to all the products you saw me use in this video there's also a link to my website where you can get plans merchandise t-shirts motivational posters and a link to my patreon page if you want to support this channel further so with that i bid you adieu you

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 630,480

Keywords: router jig, oval jig, router jigs, circle jig, ellipse jig, elliptical jig, how to cut an ellipse, woodworking jig, shop made jig, router jig pro multiplatform, router jigsaw combo, router jig to flatten wood, best way to cut an oval, router, woodworking, bourbonmoth, how to, diy, wood, easy jig, woodworking made easy, how to cut a circle, making an oval table top, wooden table, woodworking diy, woodworking how to, bourbon, moth, furniture, diy furniture, woodshop hacks, diy tip

Id: PCsmw07sSZg

Length: 31min 39sec (1899 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021