Non Productive Night
After another wid night of wind and torrential rain I was again a little concerned about the build site. There had been some leaks and the floor got quite wet in places, but no damage to anything. More leaves to sweep up though! I spent about half an hour clearing and preparing a space for the Douglas Fir which shoud be arriving tomorrow and then decided to start cutting some ply. I got a sheet of 18mm up on blocks and marked out the the two skeg sections. Unfortunatey my little Exact circular saw only cuts to 14mm so I decided to use the jigsaw. As soon as I started cutting however I realised that the blade was too coarse and it was splintering the edge of the cut badly, I tried the circular saw but that was worse. I then had a brainwave and used the Exact saw first and followed with the jigsaw to cut the last 4mm. The top was fine but the back was splintered. I didn’t want to continue getting rough cuts so I caled it a night. I will try and get some fine jigsaw blades tomorrow. All in all I’m not going to get a lot done this week. The company Christmas Party is on Wednesday night and I am out on the town with mates on Friday night. Still tis the season to be jolly and I’m not going to get stressed just yet.
Neil – Porter Cable makes a sweet 4 1/2" panel saw that is worm drive. It works well for cutting curves and you can buy blades with inwarded bevelled teeth so no splintering. Yes you’ll need to get some plywood blades for the jigsaw. One bummer about jigsaws is they don’t cut square as in when you cut a curve the lower end of the blade wanders. If you cut for long enough and the blade heats up it will permanently bend. The way I avoided splintering the ply faces was first coating the whole sheet of plywood. Each face completely wets out with about 150ml of epoxy of you squeegee and foam roller backroll. In the long run you’ll get better economy of the epoxy and the coverage is consistent over the extent of the sheet. Good luck and enjoy the holidays
Thomas