indexer

You can cut equally spaced slots and notches

Precise indexing of identical depth with this jigsaw indexer, mak-
ing gears or decorative disks from wood, hard-
board, plastic, or metal disks up to 4" in di-
on your jigsaw ameter. And you can make the indexer yourself.
Disks can be stacked for interesting lamp bases
and cuts can be filled with plastic metal to give
the appearance of inlay work. You can even
By WAL.TER E. BURTON

This simple precision device

The indexer (background) can create the notched
lets you cut accurate gears disk (lower left), wooden gears, or the jewel box
or decorative designs with
confidence in the spacing, depth,
and even the angle of the cuts

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 6-32

mount a file or other special cutter in the jigsaw

to create special effects.
A latch locks a notched disk or spur gear (the
index plate) at various positions. The work blank
is mounted on a separate shaft, offset from the
index shaft for blade clearance but coupled to it
by a pair of identical spur gears. The assembly
is mounted on a metal bar that slides smoothly
back and forth between hardwood guides
mounted on a hardwood base. To control play,
the holes through which one guide is held to the
base are elongated to allow sideways adjustment.
(The other guide is notched to clear the locking-
screw nut.)
The work-holding shaft is a steel rod soldered
into a small spur gear so as to form its axle. At
the opposite end, a flange is attached by means of
a setscrew. Flange dimensions aren't critical, but
the widest diameter should be about 7/8" Three
or four small screw holes are provided to fasten
the work blank to this flange. A thin washer be- This custom cutter makes fast work of wooden gears.
tween gear and bar provides gear-edge clearance. Before filing teeth (see sketch), bevel the bar with a
Near the unthreaded end of the index-plate file. A tool steel scraper does the final shaping

1463
indexer
precise indexing, continued
shaft is a shallow groove to receive a locking
screw that holds this shaft in its hole in the sliding
bar. The distance between the two shaft holes is
such that the gears will mesh snugly without
binding. Projecting 1/16" above the top surface
of the index-shaft gear and spaced about 3/16"
from the shaft is a small pin that engages holes
in the index plates and the lathe-gear-adapter
collar, to insure against shifting if the wingnut is
loose.
The gear-adapter collar is a simple flanged
collar used to mount a lathe change gear as an
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When the spur gear won't do, a special indexing disk
is seated on the shaft. A lathe-gear collar acts as a
spacer between thin steel plate and its locking nut.
Lathe gears serve as temporary indexing plates, with
a good starting set being gears with 48, 56, and 60
teeth. The spacer may not be necessary in all cases
index plate (top photo, p. 1462). Collar dimen-
sions in Detail A, p. 1463, are for gears with
9/16" holes. Preferably the collar should be pro-
vided with a key or pin to engage the slot in the
gear hole. Its flange is drilled to fit the spur-gear
pin. When a thin index plate is used in place of
the thicker gear, this adapter collar is placed on
top to span the unthreaded portion of the shaft.
This also keeps the collar hand and prevents it
from straying when not in normal use.
The latch is a square steel bar sliding in a
U-shaped holder made by bending a steel strip
as shown. The bar slides in holes drilled with a
1/4" bit and filed square. A coil compression
spring operates between one end of the holder
and a pin (small nail) in a hole drilled crosswise
through the latch bar. The latch handle is a short
length of brass tube bolted on near the back end.
The other end of the bar is filed wedge-shaped
and preferably hardened. The latch is mounted so
that when its tip engages a notch in a 2-1/2" in-
dex plate, the coil spring is slightly compressed.
To limit slide movement toward the jigsaw
blade, a threaded 1/4" rod extends from the
latch end of the slide and is equipped with several
nuts, the first of which strikes against a notched
metal stop plate fastened across the guide strip.
The second is a locknut. A cap nut on the end
is an optional feature that keeps you from goug-
ing your palm on the projecting rod.
The base block is undercut to give clearance
for large-diameter blanks. This block is fastened
with screws to a hardboard panel which can be
gripped readily by a C-clamp on each side, to
anchor the indexer to the saw table.
Although lathe-change or similar gears may be
used for index plates, special disks can be made.
Those in the photos were cut from electrical
junction-box covers, 3/64" thick; the notches are
slitting-saw kerfs Mo in. deep. When this indexer
was assembled, the lower surface of the latch
bar turned out to be slightly higher than the top
surface of the index-shaft gear. So each index
plate was equipped with a 1/16"-thick spacer
disk to raise it into full engagement with the
latch tip.
For shaping gear teeth and making other spe-
cial cuts, you can custom-make blades to fit your
jigsaw, as shown in the opening photo and de-
tailed on the opposite page. This particular soft-
steel bar was first filed roughly to the desired
contour, then shaped with a scraper made from
1/16" tool steel. A spur gear was used as a filing
template to shape the V-notch at the scraper's
business end.
By sliding the work-holding flange up its filed
Decorative edging is easy with the indexer to space
alternate V-notches and flutes exactly. A triangular
file does the notching and a round file takes care of
the flutes. Finger pressure minimizes bounce
shaft, you can mount disks up to about 3/8"
thick. For thicker pieces, a shim—such as a rec-
tangle of hardboard—is put in proper posi-
tion between the clamping panel and the saw
table.
Here's the recommended routine for preparing
work disks: Rough out the disk on the jigsaw, or
with a circle cutter in the drill press, and bore a
1/4" center hole. Place the disk over a 1/4" pin
in a board clamped to a disk-sander table and re-
volve the disk against the sander until it has a
uniform radius.
Now fasten the work-holding flange to the
disk blank with small screws while a 1/4" rod
extends through the center hole of each. Then
lower the forward shaft of the indexer into the
flange socket and tighten the setscrew. If you wish
to avoid screw holes in the face of the blank, glue
on a small disk that's already attached to the
flange, placing paper between the disks so the
joint can later be split apart.
The indexer is normally mounted with its slide
in line with the jigsaw blade or file. But by mount-
ing it for tangential cuts, the work can be con-
verted into a polygon, star, or other shape.
Use of the blade guard and hold-down is ad-
visable where possible.
Clamp two blades side by side in the jigsaw to cut
extra-wide kerfs. The slant here was achieved by tilt-
ing the table. Specially shaped cutters can be fash-
ioned for other special-purpose jobs
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