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Hi Muddy. I used a jigsaw with a metal (aluminum) blade but it would probably work fine with a fine wood blade.. You have to regulate the speed of your cut so as not to stay in the same location for too long cuz it will melt the acrylic. After cutting I sanded the edges with a spindle in my drill. A drill press would be better. Then sanded up to 600 grit. Whatever turns you crank. Acrylic is pretty expensive but Im very anal (don't go there Tony). You could use thin MDF or plywood instead.

I like those spreaders, can you tell me what they're made of and how you made them, pretty please?

David L

Thanks for the encouragement David. The spreaders are made with threaded rod fairly thick cant remember probably 5/8 I guess. I connected the longer pieces with a coupler so I can disassemble them and fit them out through the sound hole. The knobs are threaded. I got them at Home Depot but they're very expensive like 5 or 6 dollars each. The blocks are a sandwich with cedar in the middle and maple left over from hardwood flooring that we did in the spring Why?... cuz its pretty.

Thanks for the info!

hummingbird wrote:Hi Muddy. I used a jigsaw with a metal (aluminum) blade but it would probably work fine with a fine wood blade.. You have to regulate the speed of your cut so as not to stay in the same location for too long cuz it will melt the acrylic.

Yeah... just goes to show what a crappy jigsaw I have. Tried doing a template in acrylic but the acrylic either broke and splintered or melted, even with a fine toothed blade.

It also rattled a lot, with blade getting caught in the acrylic. It helped to use
a styrofoam backing but I ran out of styrofoam before I could finish a template.
It also would have helped if I was able to lower the speed of the blade.

I'll revisit this acrylic template idea once I get better tools. I built my current mold (almost there) with thin mdf but it bends way too easy to use it as a template IMHO.

There's no reason plastic must be used to make your guide template, "Masonite" (hardboard) -- MDF, and plywood will all work just fine. Also a standard drill bit, any size that you can match up with tight fitting dowel rod will get the job done. What is critical is getting the holes perpendicular -- so a portable drill stand or drill press is required. Once you sand your pattern smooth you can seal and strengthen the edges by leeching CA glue all the way around (the template will then be good for a zillion copies!). Before we had CNC machines this is how our molds were fabricated.