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Builders’ Tip: A Tool to Find Circle Centers — Spot On
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Click for larger image. | When it really matters how close you are to dead center on a circle, the tool in the accompanying drawing that I fabricated can help you to get spot on.
To make it:
- Dado a couple of 1x3s to fashion a 90° half-lap joint.
- Then glue and screw the pieces together.
- Now pick one edge of the longer arm as your scribing edge, and drive two 16d nails through the short arm.
- The distance of the nails, A and B, should be equidistant from the scribing edge.
To use this center-finding tool:
- Set the nails against the circumference of your circular object and scribe a line down the long arm.
- Now, rotate the tool a quarter-turn or so, and repeat the process.
- Where the two scribed lines cross is dead center.
You can build one of these gizmos in any size that you need.
The two nails should be no less than a quarter of the diameter apart and no wider apart than three-quarters of the diameter.
I use one all the time for finding the centers of Sonotubes. Although I can’t draw a line across thin air, I can stretch a piece of string into two knife cuts on opposite sides of the tube located by the center-finder’s arm.
— T. H. Richards, Mont Tremblant, PQ, Canada
Tips & Techniques provided by Fine Homebuilding.
©2005 The Taunton Press
To request a reprint of this feature, e-mail Christina Glennon at Fine Homebuilding.
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