handyman Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Hi Just curious if anyone has cut plywood sheets using a hand jigsaw to make flight cases. I laminate the sheets myself and usually use b&q plywood to build my cases. B&q have a free cutting service but the quality of their ply isn't great. It's softwood made from unknown wood variety. I want to use thinner, lighter 6mm birch ply from timber merchants which is superior quality. - but dimber merchants do not offer a cutting service. I was curious as to whether anyone has hand cut plywood using a jigsaw. I posted on a handyman forum and the carpenters said all wood cuts need to be done on circular saw using a straight edge as a guide to make perfectly straight cuts. However with flight cases slightly wobbly cuts is tolerable isn't it. As long as they have the same max point that meet exactly on the cut line and don't cut beyond the line the extrusions should sit correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 If you have a hand held circular saw, the cut is so much better, but if you use a guide clamped to the panel and run the jigsaw down it, they can cut straight. B&Q timber is really expensive, timber merchants are much cheaper, and mine will cut panels no problem - and they're much cheaper. What do you use for the laminate outside? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handyman Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 If you have a hand held circular saw, the cut is so much better, but if you use a guide clamped to the panel and run the jigsaw down it, they can cut straight. B&Q timber is really expensive, timber merchants are much cheaper, and mine will cut panels no problem - and they're much cheaper. What do you use for the laminate outside? do you have a trade-point card with b&q?? they bring the prices way down on timber. 15-20% down in fact. I have compared timber prices with timber merchants and b&q with trade card. B&Q is actually closely priced. They lack quality and the ply tends to split. Which is my main gripe with them. Jigsaw with a guide is worse than jigsaw without - I don't know why but when you have a guide clamped down the blade has a tendency to bend outwards and cut away from the line. I find that it's better to cut them by drawing a line and follow the line manually - you can self correct yourself, and point inwards when the blade is veering out and vice versa. That's probably why cutting with a guide is worse, because you cannot self correct when the flexible blade decides to bend and cut outwards. Edit:Other people have the same issue with jigsaw & straight edge - so definately not an issue with my setup. http://www.woodworki...end-side-46520/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 You can buy an "own brand" hand held circular saw from B&Q for £30 all in (all the diy stores have an equivalent) and even that cheep plasticy saw will give you a considerably better quality of cut and cutting experience than a jigsaw will. Circular saws are designed to cut straight lines, jigsaws are designed to cut wavey ones. On more than one occasion I've used these cheep circular saws in anger (lots of wood to cut in a hurry = it's cheeper to buy one and discard it than spend hours cutting by hand) and happily chopped up 30+ sheets of 18mm ply without it giving me any problems. Don't waste money trying to save money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanhill Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 As others have said, a circular saw will give you a much better cut, and each cut is relatively easy to set up an do with a straight edge and a couple of quick clamps. The joints, as they are butt joints, should really be square and true to meet well as they will add rigidity to the joint, rather than just relying on the riveted-in extrusion to hold the case square. If you have a lot of similar cuts to do then using a bed saw will be significantly quicker. Obviously these are really expensive, but with a few phone calls you may be able to find a helpful chippy that may do the cuts for beer or cash. Think scenery shops, drama conservatoire workshops, etc. I would question the suitability of 6mm ply, even a good quality one, for flight cases. Generally cases are constructed from 9mm as a minimum. I reckon 6mm will be harder to make true and will fall apart quicker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave m Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Are you using aluminium extrusions or just making wooden boxes?I actually buy a lot of lidl/aldi DIY tools as they are pretty good vfm although not 110v or anything like that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owain Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Most kitchen fitters will use a router and a template to do kitchen joints. To make 'invisible' joints in a worktop would require accuracy below 1mm which would be way more precise than you'd probably need for case panels, and a router should give you very clean and absolutely perpendicular edges. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
musht Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Case companies use CNC routers, can cut all the holes and slots at one time out of the sheet. Handheld router and template is way to go for things like handle dishes, for slicing sheet circular and sawboard http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Sawboard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Lewis Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 I used to laminate ply and found it a lengthy process (although I was using aluminium stucco).I changed to resin coated ply and found the quality of the wood much better than regular ply from the timberyard and a lot quicker to work with.I found cutting with a circular saw better for long cuts, and that a straight cut edge helped a lot when getting hybrid extrusion and case maker edging to sit properly.Jigsawing takes longer and ends up giving a rougher edge... You can try covering it up, but as others state, a flat edge makes for a better case... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handyman Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 As others have said, a circular saw will give you a much better cut, and each cut is relatively easy to set up an do with a straight edge and a couple of quick clamps. The joints, as they are butt joints, should really be square and true to meet well as they will add rigidity to the joint, rather than just relying on the riveted-in extrusion to hold the case square. If you have a lot of similar cuts to do then using a bed saw will be significantly quicker. Obviously these are really expensive, but with a few phone calls you may be able to find a helpful chippy that may do the cuts for beer or cash. Think scenery shops, drama conservatoire workshops, etc. I would question the suitability of 6mm ply, even a good quality one, for flight cases. Generally cases are constructed from 9mm as a minimum. I reckon 6mm will be harder to make true and will fall apart quicker. I use double angle extrusions for the joints. I would say they are much stronger and just as true as butt jointed boxes. Butt joints aren't very strong, a trick I picked up on a carpenters forum is to use cleats instead of butt joints. a 30cm x 30cm x 30cm wooden boxes made using cleats can take a lot of abuse, a butt jointed box would fall apart. The aluminium extrusions pretty much do exactly the same job as cleats but don't take up internal space in the box. I take your point about the 9mm being stronger. I am using the 6mm for briefcase size cases for tablets & laptops. For the bigger chest/trunk size cases I always use 9mm. In short. I'm just going to buy the ply pre-cut from b&q. They're not the best of quality ply but they're the only ones I can find that will cut panels perfectly square, plus I need to build 3 cases before 24th Feb so I basically have 1 weeked to get it all done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave m Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 http://www.specialisedpanels.co.uk/phenol-plywood.htmlI found this when reading your post. They do say that they offer cut ply but could be bloody expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 I've found a table saw to be much easier to work with than circular saws. However unless you have a very big table, it is not particularly easy when cutting down whole sheets. However, the bigger question here is why are you even bothering to build your own flightcases? If you actually cost it out properly then you can usually get a case built for you for significantly less than you'd pay out yourself. The labour saved by using CNC and the economies of scale the case companies operate on means that it's almost impossible to match them with a garage-sized operation. Plus of course if you haven't done much of this before you might not get it right first time, any screw ups cost you directly, rather than the case company you contract taking on the risk. We used to build our own cases from scratch, but soon gave up on it. We do however have the tools etc. on hand to allow us to repair cases, and make alterations to suit our purposes. If cost is an issue, buy second hand cases and alter them, it's much cheaper and a lot easier than starting from scratch. Most customers couldn't give a hoot what your flightcases look like, as long as they are out of sight before the punters arrive. The only things we do build from scratch are the simplest of wooden boxes, open topped with surface mounted handles and no extrusions. The only reason we made them was because we got the wood for more or less nothing, and since it's 18mm ply you do not need to be particularly precise with the construction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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