Boston-area People With Bandsaws?

[WarriorOfMetal]

a friend of mine has offered to help me cut out the body of my first build with his bandsaw, but ideally i'd like to get it done sooner than he'd be able to. anyone willing to help me out?

thanks

[thegarehanman]

you can cut out a body pretty easily with a jigsaw as long as you're careful about not pushing it too hard around tight curves, to avoid making an angled cut. A good enough jig saw should run about $30, if memory serves me right.

[jmrentis]

Yeah, I saw a few for $30-$40 the other day. Last week when doing some templates my old passed down jigsaw finally bit the dust and started spraying plastic pieces everywhere and smoking. Anyway, I must say that I was shocked at the prices I found when looking for a new one. The first few I looked at went well upward of a c-note. I found a few cheaper ones, but even those were running closer to 40-60, with just a couple lower. Considering what I could do with the passed down jigsaw from the 70's, I'd imagine those $30 jobbies would work just fine.

Something that just came to mind, when cutting a body or whatever, first make a couple holes with a forstner bit in the sharp curve areas, this way when you get to them you can just openly rotate without having to cut a curve because as russ said this can cause problems like angled cuts. I do this on my cavity type templates.

[WarriorOfMetal]

hm....i might actually even have access to a jigsaw without having to buy one....i'll look into that possibility. the suggestion of forstner bits for pointy parts sounds like a good idea as well.

[Geo]

I use a jigsaw for bodies... the trouble is that the blade won't always cut square to the plane of your blank. You can adjust the bottom plate of the jigsaw to be square, but since the blade isn't guided at the tip, it can wander at the end if it wants to.

Just a caution.