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How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.
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Author:  Blain [ Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:10 pm ]
Post subject:  How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Well, I started off Radiusing my braces in the radius dish. It was effective, but for these reasons I searched for a better way.
-Took a lot of time and elbow grease.
-Occasionally skinned a knuckle or two on the sandpaper.

Then I bought the Brace Radius jig, but honestly don't like the design. For these reasons:
-More times than not the jig won't hold a brace down in the radius. It might hold it for a second, but it slowly slides back up and I'm getting tired of battling with it.
-Waste. Because you're running the brace across a jointer, it must be a given height to be able to clear the jig. Often this is a big waste of brace material and probably kills almost twice as many trees as needed.
-Width limitation. While most of your braces are usually within this width, I occasionally have a brace that just wont fit in this jig.

I'm looking for either an alternative solution to brace shaping that is easy to do, effective, and doesn't require a lot of elbow grease.

OR

A solution to getting the Brace Radius jig to at least hold the stinking brace down like it was intended to.

Thank you all in advance for your thoughts and ideas.

Author:  Blain [ Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Please delete this. I posted in the wrong forum.

Sorry.

Author:  jhsnider [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Jon Sevy has an interesting way of radius his braces. http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/l ... ching.html . There is a lot of good information on his site.

Author:  SteveCourtright [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

If you use the curve of the sanding bowl to trace the radius onto your brace you can bandsaw the curve and get real close before you sand in the dish. That saves a lot of time sanding in the dish.

Author:  JJ Donohue [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

I got the idea for this jig from The Zootman some years ago (when he used to build guitars). I run them past a 1/2" dia. pattern bit on the router table and then touch them up on the radius dish...all in less than a minute. You need to know when to climb cut to prevent blowout but it works just fine.

Attachment:
Brace Radius Jig 001.jpg


Attachment:
Brace Radius Jig 002.jpg


One side is radiused for back braces (15') and the other is for top braces (25').

Author:  Zach Ehley [ Tue Mar 30, 2010 12:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Same as JJ. Finish them up on the radius dish.

Author:  Chris Paulick [ Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Like Mario says, "Doesn't get much simpler then this."


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/user/closetpicker#p/u/3/C2Qeh9vjrck[/youtube]

Author:  Ian Cunningham [ Tue May 04, 2010 8:00 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do you radius your braces? Looking for new ideas.

Well now that's what I'd do......

Way to go Mario

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