Øystein Bjørndal's pantograph

Øystein Bjørndal writes: Hi. Hopefully you are overrun by these kinds of emails, but I just wanted to say thank you for the pantograph plans! And also for inspiring me to re-discover my passion for woodworking. I applied for woodworking (furniture making) in secondary school, but they only got 2 applicants so they closed the line, I went somewhere else and now I am doing a phd in electrical engineering (life is random). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_school#Norway

I originally figured I would built it in my living room (to the distress of my significant other), but have slowly moved down to the garage, building a set of saw horses with a free door as the working surface.

The only (power-)tools I have is a track-saw (works great, but I see the advantage of a table-saw), a jigsaw (which works ok for smaller parts when mounted upside-down) and a corded hand drill. I ended up buying a â€˜dowel-jigâ€™, after miserably failing to drill 90 degree holes for the shafts free hand.

I re-cut the pantograph dremel pieces to fit my larger router and it works great! I haven't actually checked that it scales correctly, as I simply line up the cutting bit by eye. It's really freeing to get a cnc like behaviour, but freehand instead of messing around in software.

I cut a circle for a dog bowl in a log I found.

Thanks for the jigsaw link, I had seen a few versions of sticking a jigsaw underneath a table, but your solution seemed simple enough to push me to actually do it :)

I attached some pictures, I haven't needed the "blade-guide" jet, but I might make something to keep the wood I am cutting down to the table; in case it slips from my grip, which hurts! I really like the fact that I can easily slip the jigsaw out and use it for other things. I have used it for a lot of "inside" cuts, where a bandsaw would not have worked. So not just a bandsaw "replacement" but also a scrollsaw :)

Best regards,

Øystein Bjørndal

More reader built pantogaphs:

Lee Zimmer's