Frame Ring Segments

With the middle ring cut the next step was to cut the ring segments. On the template these segments use the wood that is in the middle of the the ring. Note that four of the five segments are made out of 1/2” plywood, but the 5th, is 1/4” thick. The template says to trim it, but I will cut it out of a 1/4” piece of MDF.

The first step was to rough cut all the pieces on the band saw.

To make the outside cut I used the same router table jig that I used for the outside of the plates and middle ring. Of course these segments don’t have a pivot point so I needed to come up with a way to solve that. My solution was to use a circle I had cut out of a piece of lauan plywood when I was testing out the router table jig. I laid the circle down on top of the segment, carefully aligned the edge with the outside line and then screwed it to the circle.

With the piece attached I flipped the circle over to mount it on the router table. I made these cuts one at a time, but you could attach more then one segment at a time to the circle if you wanted to.

I probably could have adapted this jig to cut the inside edge of the segments but this edge doesn’t need to be as clean as the outside one so I decided to do the inside edges on a drum sander, just sanding down to the line by eye.

To cut the slots in the ring segments I used the same jig that I used to cut the slots in the middle ring. I did need to make one change, a large hole drilled in the plywood back piece , that I could put a clamp through to hold the segment in place.

The final steps were to trim the ends to length on the band saw, remove the templates and sand all the pieces.