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I began the form block by purchasing two pieces of Oak 11" X 66" X 1". The local specialty wood shop here is great and they custom milled the two blanks so that they were perfectly true and exactly 1" thick. I positioned the Master Template/Drill Jig on a blank and drilled the tail alignment hole with a 1/4 bit. I then inserted a 1/4 hardened alignment pin to hold it in place.
I then repeated the procedure with the Nose of the form block.
With the master template now secured to the form blank I traced around the template with a very sharp pencil. I then removed the master template and rough cut to the line with the band saw.
The next step was to remove the line with the disk sander and then join the two halves and final smooth the contour with the belt sander. With two inches of material to work with it is very easy to keep the sander flat.
Now with two halves of the form block matching perfectly I marked the sides that would be on the inside and using a 1/8 round over bit routed both edges. This gave me a nice smooth radius when forming the ribs and allow me to form either left or right ribs quickly.
I then separated the two halves and finished drilling all the holes needed to form the ribs. I used "T" nuts inlet on the back side of the form block and 2" 1/4 -20 bolts to secure the halves together. To inlet the T Nuts I used a 3/4 hole saw with the bit turned around so not to hog out the holes. I inlet 1/8 in and then removed the center with a forstner bit. The "T" Nuts are larger than 1/4" so the hole must be enlarged slightly but only as deep as the T-nut to prevent them from splitting the hard oak. I have found that T Nuts vary in diameter depending on the manufacturer so you will have to mic the ones you buy to see how much to enlarge the holes.
The finished form block is ready for some 2024 T3 Aluminum. Finished 03/06/2005, Time to complete was 4.5 hours. |
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Send mail to lfoor@acsalaska.net with
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