Building Grating with Proxxon Small Saw KS230.

The roof of the bridge of my model is fully covered with gratings. Sometimes you cannot find the grating that fits your model's scale, so you must resort to building it. To build a good grating, you need patience, to say the least. Liking all sorts of jigs and tools, I decided to build them myself. As usual I searched the web and combined a number of options in trying to accommodate what is applicable to my situation - tools and budget.

Using this method, you will need a circular saw (table saw). The problem is that the features of a tablesaw can vary greatly. I have one from lower/middle shelf in terms of features i.e. the small Proxxon, where you cannot adjust angle or level of the blade, which is a pain in the butt, however on the other hand it can cut very thin strips of wood very nicely. Anyway, since we cannot lower the blade, we have to raise the plate so the blade sticks out only 1mm or so.

The second thing are the different blades you can buy; standard Proxxon KS-230 blades are too thin (0.5 mm). A 1mm thick blade is also available either from them, or a 3rd party manufacturer (I have recently seen some nice blades from ZGONC in Austria). In the end I decided to buy the one from Proxxon - see picture below.  This cost €21 if I remember correctly. (approx £14, or $23USD)

 

I will now work on the tablesaw surface i.e. a piece of wood/plywood that I will use as a  plate that I will fix to the Proxxon’s aluminium table. A new blade normally sticks out by 8 mm. In order to have it sticking out only by 1mm I need flat piece of wood 7 mm thick. Such timber can be bought from any good timber merchants or hobby shop. I was quite lucky as I had some nice ready finished pieces of oak that I had recently got from my brother . I cut them into shape, and glued them together leaving a gap for the blade to protrude. See below for this detail.

 

When the glue is set, I take another piece of the same thickness of oak (or ply) and put it under my new oak-plate jig, and using the table fence as your guide, I neatly cut the 1mm wide/deep groove into the jig timber....1mm way from the blade slot, but running parallel to it down the length of the jig. If the groove is too far out, then your grating will not be as accurate as you expect.

Now I glue into the groove a 2 x 1mm brass bar.

The reason for this bar is to act as a guide ensuring that each 1mm deep slot you cut into the timber is exactly 1mm apart from each other, creating uniformity. To use this bar, when you have cut your initial slot, hook this over the bar to cut your next slot. When this slot is cut, again hook that slot over the bar to cut your next slot, and so on. This is important as this ensures the accuracy of this jig.

The jig is almost ready. The last job is to mount it to the base of the tablesaw. You cannot use clamps as they would obstruct working area. After some testing I figured that the screws holding the original aluminium plate were long enough to secure the extra depth of the timber to the tablesaw working are, providing you make countersunk holes in the wooden plate. I now accurately marked and drilled two holes and put original screws through them to secure the jig.

Showing the brass track insert

 

The jig secured to the Proxxon using countersunk screw hole.

 

Cutting the final slotted/grooved grate timber into individual components. Set the fence 1mm away from the blade for this operation.