Things With Strings

I'm moving things forward very slowly on the banjo making front, but as long as I'm doing something that will contribute to the overall goal, that's OK. So I've been re-sawing some wood (with mixed success) and stuff, and I also made a planer jig for my router (didn't work out too good). Today I thought I'd have a go at cutting some circles in MDF with my router. At some point, I'm going to need these when getting the pot/rim circular, so I made a simple jig for my router. Basically, it's piece of plywood, to which the router is screwed, and there are holes drilled for pivot points into which I insert a nail. There are loads of videos of how to make much more professional versions of this type of jig on youtube, so there's not much point me going into further details.  The first problem I noticed was that on my el-cheapo router, you have to keep the trigger pressed with your finger whilst operating it, this meant some hand switching when turning

Yes, I know I'm not the first person to make one of these, and I certainly won't be the last. When I started making the banjo block rim the other week, I quickly realised that it would have been a whole lot easier if the wood was at least a little bit square to start with, so I figured that before I made any more it would be nice to have a table saw to square up the source material. Naturally I didn't really want to go out and buy one if I was only going to use it every blue moon so I decided to put my old circular saw and some scrap wood to good use and build my own. The picture below show the finished article, complete with fence. The stand is from a broken old workmate-a-like I had lying around, the top is from some kitchen cabinet material as is the fence. I added a safety NVR switch, because it's dangerous enough as it is, and I didn't want to add further risks. Anyway, enough of that, here are the pictures DIY table saw circular saw mounting