Center Line Marking Jig

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The wood I used for this jig was 1-½ ” wide scrap piece of ¾” plywood. I started by eyeballing a 5/16” through hole for the pencil in the middle of the piece and about 2-½” from the end. Next I drilled another hole in the sacrificial board on my drill press; this will be used as a pivot point later.

I put a pencil through the jig with the pencil going in to the hole in the sacrificial board. I attached a scrap piece to the drill press table to work as a temporary fence. I positioned the fence so that the hole for the dowel is in the middle of the piece. Dowels are just a tad bit less than 2” from the pencil hole. After drilling the first hole I flipped the piece 180° and drilled the second hole. This way I can cancel out any error in the positioning of the fence. I used 1” long 5/16” dowels so the holes were about ½" deep.

I dry fitted the jig to see if was working and everything seemed to work all right, I used a small washer head screw to hold the pencil. I can tighten the screw by hand after it has been done first with a screwdriver.

I left a bit of a handle to the end so that it’s easier to grip when using. I also glued the dowels with some wood glue.

I know that people have done similar jigs before but I’m pretty happy with how the jig turned out. My fig is too small to mark a center on the face of a 2x4 for but works great with the edge. If you need to have more capacity you can put the dowels further away from the pencil hole. I also gave the jig a couple of coats of spray lacquer off camera.

Evening Melodrama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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