How to Use a Circle Jig on the Bandsaw

I got a project I'm working on, it’s a table. And I’ve got to cut a big round top so I want to take a second and show you the circle cutter that I would use to cut a perfect circle every time. I made this myself so it’s a shot made circle cutter. I got a couple of things going for it. Now look at the bottom of it. Here on the bottom there’s a cleat, this cleat is going to end up, up against the edge here, to my band saw table. Another cleat back here, this one has got a threaded knob into it. When I tighten this knob, it tightens against the dove tail slider. I’m going to show you in just a second so obviously in the cleats are also helping to hold the two heads of the jig together.

Now this dove tail slider is here. So the end is actually cut in a dove tail shape. When I loosen the knob in this cleat, I can slide this back and forth that lets me adjust for different radian. So when this goes out to my band saw, it slips over the table, you remember that cleat hits the table so it’s up against that there. I'm going to slide my pivot point as close as I can to the blade and then look down through here to eye it up. What I want to do is get the center of the pivot point at the very front of the band saw blade in order for this work correctly. Then I can reach under here and lock that cleat right to the bottom of my band saw table and we should be set.

I’ll do a test cut first, just to make sure it’s cut in a circle correctly. If your front to back adjustment is just a little bit off then the circle is not going to cut perfectly. So sometimes you’re going to need to do a test cut, tweak this position just a little bit, and then correct it before you go on to the real circle. In order to make a cut, I need to drill a hole in my piece that will sit on that pivot point right there. So I've got a quarter inch hole, matches the quarter inch dal. This is what I use when I do larger circles like this, on smaller diameter circles, and this time to the jig. I've just got a screw tip poking through and you can rest small circles on that. But I find on bigger circles because it’s better to use the quarter inch dial and a quarter inch hole and engages better so they’re not like they jump off the circle cutter on you.

So I'm going to get that in position, get it close to the blade it’s not pushed right up against the blade. Lock this down, and we’ll see how this test cut goes.

That worked out great, circle cut very well. Like I said sometimes you have to make small adjustments in the circle cutter position to get it to cut just right. Once this is correctly set, I can slide this to any position I want in order to make the final cut. So now I'm ready to actually do you a pig tail top I was talking about.

I've got the hole drill in the bottom of my table top. I've done one other thing to get started. I’ve cut a knot here. That so that one I start making my circle, when I first start cutting, there’s a spot here for the blade to sit inside, instead of starting out here on the outside of my material. This way I’ll get a perfectly round circle. So all I need to do now is get the dial, seed it into that center point. This is the hardest part of the whole process, just find a metal hole. Then I can gently bring the slider in that not just going to completely capture the blade.

Now the diameter of my circle is determined by the distance from my pivot point here some place to the bottom of that nudge. So that would be the radius and of course two times that, would be the diameter. So we’re all set to go here, get this table top cut out.

There we go we got a perfect circle. Much easier than using a compass and drawing a circle and trying to do a free hand. I’ve used this shot made circle cutting jig for everything from table tops, to ball blinks. It works great. Hope it works well for you, too.