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Question about Jigsaws

A

anonymous278347457

Feb 12, 2005
1,833
4
#1
Ive got a cheap £20 Jigsaw in my garage
Its a bit like one of these:
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I think its another brand though(Most cheap stuff is very similar anyway)

Anyway, I was wondering what thickness wood can I cut smoothly with a cheap jigsaw like this one. The woods I will probably be cutting will be maple, ash, Sapele and Walnut(very hard woods I guess)

The reason I ask, is that Im planning another build, and I want to cut the body myself this time(last time I got a guy at a woodshop to rough it out on a bandsaw for me)
 
#2
It's all about the hardness of the wood, and the quality and length of the blade. That blade better be longer than the wood is thick, and the better quality blade you get, the easier it'll be.

Most any jigsaw is good, as long as you test it to see if it wiggles or feels loose. Tight, strong saws are well worth the investment, but quality blades are the dealbreaker. Don't get cheap blades.
 
#3
Be careful if its the type that will cut angles. Make sure that it is set tightly at a 90 degree angle (saw blade straight verticle) so not to overcut or undercut the opposite side of the wood the saw sits on.
 
#5
for a few months I've been putting off my double bass project but started last december with glue up of huge pieces of poplar for the back. They are 2" thick and I used a (very much liked by the general woodworkers) big and powerful bosch jigsaw and one of their more aggressive and big blades. It was VERY difficult cutting thorugh that wood, but it was so heavy and awkward to handle that I didn't want to put it through my bandsaw.

What I'm trying to say is that cheap or not, you are somewhat limited by the thickness of the wood you can cut well with a jigsaw ...1.75" being a more realistic thickness for cutting 'smoothly'. If all you want to do is cut out body and neck outlines, then the jigsaw you got now is plenty enough. Don't compare a bandsaw to it, though, there's a lot more you can do with the big gun than what a jigsaw can do.
 
#8
The biggest problem with jig saws and thick material is that the blade doesn't move far enough for the teeth in the center of the board to clear themselves of the chips from the last pass. The dust stays in the gullet (the space between the teeth points) and the blade looses the ability to move forward. On especially oily or pitch filled woods the saw dust will compact and stick inside the gullets and the blade will become as useful as dental floss. To combat this, choose a blade with as few teeth as possible so the gullet is large and long enough to still go all the way through the board at the short point of the saw's stroke. You can also "pulse" your cut by pushing, stopping, pushing, stopping. A pain in the tookus for sure, but it does work.

Better saws have a reciprocating feature that makes the blade move not only up and down but pushes the tip forward on the up stroke and back on the down. This allows the teeth to clear, but does not work well on turns since the tip of the blade is out ahead of the butt and the blade will want to follow that line.

With the power off, hold on to the tip of the long blade and force the tool from side to side to get an idea of the small amount of pressure it takes to bend these blades. You can bend the blade in the wood by pushing sideways to make a turn instead of rotating around the cut. This is especially true on inside cuts. The blade wants to continue on in a straight line so the top of the blade may be moving along the line of your cut while the bottom is still traveling straight into the waist for instance. To combat this tendancy I reccomend making radial cuts (90 degrees to what ever the body shape is) around your pattern before you start to cut the shape. Make these every 6" or so of straight runs and down to every 1/2" at tight turns like the tip of your horns. What this will do is allow the waste to fall away at regular intervals and allow the blade to straighten itself out. You will also be able to see if the blade is wandering down deep.

The blade will want to follow any grain structure the wood has. There is not much you can do about that except for watch closely. The radial cuts I mentioned above will also help.

The blade will heat due to friction as you cut and the metal will soften. What may work well for you when you start may be like cutting with a wet noodle part way through. Either let it cool for a while or change blades frequently if this happens. Do not try and cool it by plunging it in water or spraying it. You can remove the temper from the blade that way and wind up with mild steel instead of tool steel for a blade.

I hope this helps. As usual the best information comes from experience. The problem with that is you wind up with kindling at worst and smaller than you indended bodies at best!

Greg
 
#12
Jigsaws can do the trick, just take care and think all the time.
The problem that may occur is side bending of the blade, which ends upp with undercutting the contour. This is a true pain! Actually, if your bandsaw is in imperfect condition, you can have similar problems with that. Implying that you can avoid it.......

If the blade is stiff enough, meaning pretty thick, and if you go slowly, and the angle foot is strictly square, there will be no undercut.

Each jigsaw comes with a max thickness statement. The one in the ad you show will probably stop at 45-50mm, i.e. less than 2".
The Festool used by JP (sorry, Peter, that's what the site said, at least in the latter days) is a sturdy and powerful piece, that can take on 110mm stock! With quite accurate square angle, with the right blade.
Bosch and DeWalt have similar saws, to mention only two.

Can you get by with the one in the ad? Well, I have a cheap SKIL of some 500-600W, that works well. That is, I have to take account of the undercut and cut 4-5mm wider than the final result, and go pretty slowly. But, it works!
 
#13
I took a look at my jigsaw, and I think the max depth is about 50mm.

But the thing is, thats max, I had a go at cutting 45mm thick sapele, and the thing undercut loads.

So I guess its probably not such a good idea to go that close to the max depth, and i probably want to get some new blades(the one I used had been on there for ages)
 

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