A couple of days ago I moved to a newly built dacha. I’ve already unpacked, set up the furniture, and as I walk around I feel like there’s not enough atmosphere. I decided to make several fakes using a hand jigsaw from plywood that was left over after construction. Therefore, next I’ll tell you a little about the cutting process itself and show you the drawings and stencils for cutting with a hand jigsaw that I used.
Source nestling.com.ua
Cutting plywood products with a hand jigsaw requires time, attention and patience. However, it is worth it - the result can be beautiful and, most importantly, practical products.
How to choose blades?
The quality of crafts made by hand with a jigsaw and ease of use primarily depend on the blades. Most often, any owner has this power tool and uses it only when it is necessary to make an even cut or a beautiful pattern.
A jigsaw is used for cutting wood or plywood, as well as plastic or metal, so you should pay special attention to the choice of blades.
The device is usually sold complete with a set of blades intended for use on different surfaces.
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It is not always possible to perform this work using other tools. A jigsaw is a universal tool that can be used by both beginners and professionals.
Characteristics of plywood
Plywood is an accessible and inexpensive material for making crafts. You probably have pieces of plywood in your closet or garage.
You can always buy it in specialized stores.
- For crafts that will be used indoors, it is better to use plywood of the FK category.
- For work that will be outdoors, it is recommended to buy plywood of the FSK category, which is moisture resistant.
- Sheets of plywood have different thicknesses, so before starting work, decide what thickness of material is best for you to use.
- For small products, a material with a thickness of 3-5 mm is suitable; for large-scale work, plywood of 10-13 mm is used.
For beginners, it is better to use plywood made from softer types of wood: pine, fir, spruce.
Sheets of plywood from harder wood species: birch, oak and cedar are used for the manufacture of works intended for varnishing.
Tool preparation
The canvas is fixed in the device strictly along a vertical line and is well stretched. The blade teeth should point down.
To cut out a small part, select small blades, and for larger elements, choose a blade with large teeth. This way the cut will be neat and thin.
Work always begins with drawing up a drawing for a craft using a jigsaw. When working with a hand tool, the cut is made not along the drawing line, but along the inside of the contour. Fakes made with a hand jigsaw are more accurate.
Characteristic features of a jigsaw
The miracle jigsaw provides convenient cutting of lines on a wooden base, this is facilitated by a narrow cutting blade. For woodworking, a band saw is more useful, but cutting out plywood is a better miracle with a jigsaw. The main advantages of the tool are as follows:
- Accurate cutting of parts, the cut line comes out quite smooth and does not require grinding.
- Thanks to the narrow blade in the miracle jigsaw, cutting out sharp corners and small parts is possible.
- Processing of internal grooves begins with a hole prepared with drill number 3.
Regarding the technical characteristics of the miracle jigsaw, the following features are noted:
- Easy stretching and fixing of the fabric.
- The cutting process is much easier than with a band saw.
- Cutting out a miracle with a jigsaw creates virtually no risk of injury.
- The tool does not require frequent adjustment.
There are several parameters that you should focus on when choosing a miracle jigsaw for cutting:
- The main thing is capacity; this indicator indicates the size between the rear wall and the cutting blade. There are miracle jigsaws with sizes from 12 to 26 inches.
- The thickness of the material that the tool can process.
- Number of moves in 1 minute.
- Saw stroke height.
To cut complex elements from plywood using a miracle jigsaw, two types of saws made of steel are used.
Advice! For beginners, it is better to practice on a large-toothed blade designed for thick plywood. It is also used to make cutting boards. Small teeth on a thin file allow you to cut out filigree elements of crafts from thin plywood.
The result of the work of a top-class professional is presented in the photo:
Crafts made with a jigsaw
Let's try to make a light craft box ourselves using a jigsaw:
The first thing to do is prepare the work area and tools. Next, you need to choose a suitable material - plywood without visible defects.
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Then you need to process the workpiece with sandpaper and transfer the product template onto it, according to which the elements will be cut.
Now let's move on to the work itself: position the jigsaw perpendicular to the workpiece and carefully cut it along the contour. It is necessary to work as smoothly as possible, without making sudden movements.
Let's move on to assembling the product. Most often, PVA glue is used to connect parts together. Excess glue must be removed before it begins to dry.
Before gluing the parts, it is recommended to assemble the box and check the compatibility of the cut pieces. At this stage, you can adjust the elements if necessary.
Take a look at the photo of the finished craft made with a jigsaw! It looks very neat and attractive and can be a wonderful gift or interior decoration.
Preparatory steps
Sawing out a miracle with a jigsaw requires painstaking work from the master and develops perseverance and patience. Initially, you should take care of organizing your workplace. Mandatory conditions for comfortable work are high-quality ventilation and lighting. A private house provides more options for choosing a utility room; in a city apartment, a glazed balcony is suitable.
The second important step is purchasing the material. High-quality plywood reduces the risk of part delamination or cracks appearing when cutting out a miracle with a jigsaw. The second reason for violating the integrity of the material is an incorrectly selected canvas or unprofessional actions. For cutting crafts, plywood with a thickness of 3-4 mm is intended. The following steps will help prevent delamination:
- Depending on the area of the surface to be treated, dilute the required volume of the mixture of water and PVA glue. For small areas, 2 tablespoons of water and a few drops of glue are enough.
- After thorough stirring, the solution is applied with a brush to the back wall of the plywood workpiece in 2-3 layers.
- The material is left until completely dry.
Comment! The adhesive solution will successfully replace furniture or parquet varnish.
Before cutting out the miracle with a jigsaw, the plywood needs to be cleaned. Chips, microscopic cracks, dark marks from knots are removed with sandpaper of various grain sizes. To give the surface maximum smoothness, stripping the plywood against the grain helps. First, work with medium-grain paper, the final touches are applied with fine-grain sandpaper. The complete absence of burrs allows you to move on to the main stages of work.
Photos of crafts with a jigsaw
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The final stage
After assembling and adjusting all the parts, the crafts proceed to gluing using PVA or Titan glue. Depending on the design, it is recommended to tie multi-layer elements tightly with strong thread and leave to dry. The process lasts no more than 15 minutes. An example of a product that is difficult to cut out with a jigsaw is shown below in the photos and drawings:
You can add decorativeness by burning patterns on individual elements of the craft. First, the drawing is applied with a pencil, after which they work with an electric burner. An openwork vase for sweets will be a worthy table decoration:
Sawing out a miracle with a jigsaw is a painstaking task. In order for the product to last for a long time, it needs decorative processing. Wood varnishing helps preserve the pristine beauty of the natural material. To work, you will need a high-quality varnish composition and a convenient glue brush. Try to ensure that there are no scratches or visible marks on the craft. When cutting out animal figures or models of mechanisms with a miracle jigsaw, sometimes they resort to fragmentary coating of the product with paints. This technique brings the craft closer to the original.
In some cases, the following is used for decorative processing:
- acrylic paints, the drying process of which lasts from 6 to 8 hours;
- gouache;
- watercolor paints.
By combining two or three tones on a brush, you can get interesting color tints.
As you can see, cutting out miracles with a jigsaw is a creative hobby that allows the master’s talent to be fully revealed.
What you need for work
Jigsaw
This is a priori, since we are talking about making crafts using such a tool. The question is different - which one is better to work with. Electric models are much more expensive than their manual counterparts, but have many advantages. We have already talked about choosing a jigsaw.
For example, high speed and cutting accuracy, clean edges, the ability to change cutting parameters and a number of others. If crafting from plywood is not a one-time, short-term hobby, then it’s worth spending money on an electric jigsaw. It is universal and will come in handy on the farm more than once, since depending on the type of file it can “work” not only with wood, but also with non-ferrous metals, plastics, and plexiglass.
It is somewhat more difficult with a hand jigsaw. Its design is quite simple - a frame with screw clamps and a saw handle.
The nuance is that cutting blades break quite easily (from excessive pressure, changing the position of a hand tool), and therefore it is advisable to purchase them with a reserve; Fortunately, they are cheap.
Hacksaw
It is needed only at one stage - when cutting a dimensional sheet into separate fragments. Doing this with a hand jigsaw is an unpromising and unprofitable activity; A lot of time and files will be wasted.
Stand
No one will cut plywood by weight; It's clear. Cutting out parts by laying the sheet on the tabletop risks damaging it. It is precisely in order to ensure the “safety” of the latter that the stand is needed. You can make it yourself from scrap boards. What such a device looks like (one of the options) can be seen in the figure.
The stand is fixed to the base using clamps (on a non-working table) or self-tapping screws (if there is a carpentry workbench in the outbuilding, shed, or garage). Although these are not the only mounting options. It is not difficult to understand what to do, depending on local conditions.
Skin
The ideal tool for fine wood processing is a sander. But for crafts made from plywood that do not have large areas, it is not suitable. Therefore, only sandpaper; medium-fraction - for primary grinding of workpieces and with fine grain - for finishing.
Additionally
- Files and needle files.
- Awl.
- A simple pencil and carbon paper.
- Glue, if the craft is created as a composite or multi-level one, that is, with the fixation of two or more shaped fragments in separate areas.
- Varnishes, paints, stains.
Copying “one to one” in this case is hardly advisable. Any work done with your own hands is a process with a creative component. That is why the dimensions should be determined independently, depending on where you intend to place (or how to use) the craft. For example, will it “look” in a particular place, will it fit organically into the interior of the room.
Even if you liked the drawing, it is not difficult to change the geometry of the figure by applying the scaling rules. Especially when it comes to drawing a contour on plywood with a simple pencil; It’s quite easy to correct any mistake, or to correct anything in certain areas. It is not much more difficult to modify any sketch, introducing something of your own, original into the sample.
Characteristic features of a jigsaw
The miracle jigsaw provides convenient cutting of lines on a wooden base, this is facilitated by a narrow cutting blade. For woodworking, a band saw is more useful, but cutting out plywood is a better miracle with a jigsaw. The main advantages of the tool are as follows:
- Accurate cutting of parts, the cut line comes out quite smooth and does not require grinding.
- Thanks to the narrow blade in the miracle jigsaw, cutting out sharp corners and small parts is possible.
- Processing of internal grooves begins with a hole prepared with drill number 3.
Regarding the technical characteristics of the miracle jigsaw, the following features are noted:
- Easy stretching and fixing of the fabric.
- The cutting process is much easier than with a band saw.
- Cutting out a miracle with a jigsaw creates virtually no risk of injury.
- The tool does not require frequent adjustment.
There are several parameters that you should focus on when choosing a miracle jigsaw for cutting:
- The main thing is capacity; this indicator indicates the size between the rear wall and the cutting blade. There are miracle jigsaws with sizes from 12 to 26 inches.
- The thickness of the material that the tool can process.
- Number of moves in 1 minute.
- Saw stroke height.
To cut complex elements from plywood using a miracle jigsaw, two types of saws made of steel are used.
The result of the work of a top-class professional is presented in the photo:
The final stage
After assembling and adjusting all the parts, the crafts proceed to gluing using PVA or Titan glue. Depending on the design, it is recommended to tie multi-layer elements tightly with strong thread and leave to dry. The process lasts no more than 15 minutes. An example of a product that is difficult to cut out with a jigsaw is shown below in the photos and drawings:
You can add decorativeness by burning patterns on individual elements of the craft. First, the drawing is applied with a pencil, after which they work with an electric burner. An openwork vase for sweets will be a worthy table decoration:
Sawing out a miracle with a jigsaw is a painstaking task. In order for the product to last for a long time, it needs decorative processing. Wood varnishing helps preserve the pristine beauty of the natural material. To work, you will need a high-quality varnish composition and a convenient glue brush. Try to ensure that there are no scratches or visible marks on the craft. When cutting out animal figures or models of mechanisms with a miracle jigsaw, sometimes they resort to fragmentary coating of the product with paints. This technique brings the craft closer to the original.
In some cases, the following is used for decorative processing:
- acrylic paints, the drying process of which lasts from 6 to 8 hours;
- gouache;
- watercolor paints.
By combining two or three tones on a brush, you can get interesting color tints.
As you can see, cutting out miracles with a jigsaw is a creative hobby that allows the master’s talent to be fully revealed.
Preparatory steps
Sawing out a miracle with a jigsaw requires painstaking work from the master and develops perseverance and patience. Initially, you should take care of organizing your workplace. Mandatory conditions for comfortable work are high-quality ventilation and lighting. A private house provides more options for choosing a utility room; in a city apartment, a glazed balcony is suitable.
The second important step is purchasing the material. High-quality plywood reduces the risk of part delamination or cracks appearing when cutting out a miracle with a jigsaw. The second reason for violating the integrity of the material is an incorrectly selected canvas or unprofessional actions. For cutting crafts, plywood with a thickness of 3-4 mm is intended. The following steps will help prevent delamination:
- Depending on the area of the surface to be treated, dilute the required volume of the mixture of water and PVA glue. For small areas, 2 tablespoons of water and a few drops of glue are enough.
- After thorough stirring, the solution is applied with a brush to the back wall of the plywood workpiece in 2-3 layers.
- The material is left until completely dry.
Introduction
There are a lot of design options - from the simplest, where the file just sticks out of the tabletop, to quite complex designs with guides, the ability to cut at an angle, when it is possible to set the file not only 90 degrees to the base, but change the angle (well, within reason, Certainly). There are devices (machines) for sawing, that is, making a straight and even cut.
Such devices are increasingly used due to their versatility and functionality. In fact, their parameters and purpose are similar to stationary machines and have strictly defined practical applications in every workshop.
Purpose
A homemade jigsaw is a universal tool and is very popular, so it can be used both at home and in industrial enterprises - furniture shops or carpentry workshops. At the same time, of course, you need to understand that the quality of work largely depends on the jigsaw and file itself, and the design only helps and expands the capabilities of the hand tool.
- solid wood;
- plywood;
- various boards (fibreboard, chipboard, MDF, etc.);
- plastics
- thin (soft) sheet metal
A distinctive feature is the use in the design of a standard (household) jigsaw, which almost every craftsman has, as a saw blade mover. Through simple manipulations, it is secured with the saw facing upwards, so the master does not drive the saw with the tool, but moves the workpiece.
Advantages
The main advantage of such designs in comparison with hand tools is the ease of processing materials. During the processing process, the master does not hold the tool itself (it is quite weighty), but the workpiece. This allows you to perform work with maximum precision. In addition, the presence of stops makes it possible to cut evenly, but this is expensive.
Basic design
As mentioned above, there are a large number of design options, however, it is necessary to highlight the most basic basic structural elements, namely:
- desktop (bed);
- drive – jigsaw;
- a rocker for attaching the file and keeping it taut.
The machines differ in such parameters as power (determined by the power of a hand-held power tool), the working stroke of the saw, and the method of its fastening. Of course, the overall dimensions of the product also play an important role, including the area of the working surface of the table, which allows for better processing of certain workpieces. All other parameters (operating modes, laser illumination, etc.) are determined by the characteristics of the hand tool itself.
