Day 3 The first Cut

I discovered a flaw in using jigsaws. When you cut curves, no matter how slow you go you end up with a slight camber, i.e. the profile is not straight and you end up with one side of the cut higher than the other. This is probably due to slight pressure on the jigsaw or the blade not being rigid.

Anyway, I found this out with testing and it usually affected tight curves. One solution is to leave a millimetre or two spare then finish it off with a router. This was quite successful but relies on no guides for the router.

Luckily Harry the Builder came round and came up with another solution. Using a straight edge (e.g. this is me with my square) put the handle tight on the high side, angle it back slightly and scrape. The finish is smooth and the edge is now nice and straight :)

If you look carefully at the picture you can see a little bit of daylight on the left of the square. For the marquee the camber was more pronounced so I sanded it a little then repeated the above procedure.

So I set about cutting out the first side and it was fairly successful. For all the straight edges I clamped a straight edge to guide the jigsaw, then removed for the curves.

There were a few issues, mainly on the curve beneath the marquee I just didn't make the curve (due to the angle I had to put myself in to get round), so I adjust the marquee and top slightly to make up and it's ok.

Remember to check out my MAME Cabinet Plans for the detailed instructions. Hopefully tomorrow the other side will be cut.

The plan is draw round this one to ensure both sides are equal, then measure out on the inside of each where the baton will go to hold the rest of the cabinet. After this the edges will be rounded (I'm not using T-Molding).