The following tools and materials are needed to make the base plates:
Rubber cement glue
Fine grit sandpaper
Two wood clamps
Electric drill
Jigsaw (or handsaw)
Center punch
Hammer
A ¼” thick piece of wood that is minimally 25” x 12”
Drill bits:
For details on how to safely use an electric drill and a jigsaw please visit https://www.homedepot.com/c/ab/how-to-use-a-power-drill/9ba683603be9fa5395fab9022a5fa8b
To begin, print the Base_Plate_Bottom_Printout and the Base_Plate_Top_Printout (see addenda) and cut out the square along the edge.
Add a little bit of rubber cement glue to one edge of the underside of the cutouts and align the glued side to a straight edge the piece of wood. Smooth out any bubbles in the paper that form when attaching the paper. Gradually add more glue to the bottom of each cutout and continue to smooth the page onto the piece of wood.
After both pages are firmly affixed to the wood, use a jigsaw, or handsaw, to cut along the outer edge of the pasted cutouts.
Use the sandpaper to smooth out any splintery parts on the cut edges.
Place the plates on top of one another and align at least two adjacent edges.
Use a wood clamp to clamp the sandwiched pieces to the workbench. Take the punch and place the sharp tip at the center of the cross lines on an outlined hole in the corner of the plates.
If the top plate cutout is on top, the picture on the right has the outlines highlighted in green. The left picture has the bottom plate cutout holes highlighted in green.
Use the hammer to strike the top of the punch with one solid hit to make an indent. This indent is used to keep the drill bit from moving across the board and instead stay in the correct spot. The following image shows how messy a drilled hole can get when a punch is not used.
After punching all four corner holes, use the size H (closest fraction size 17/64”) drill bit to drill through both plates. Be careful not to drill into the workbench or table that the plates are clamped to. To ensure that the drill bit is sharp, examine the tip. Example of a sharp and dull bit are given below. Circled in red, the sharp bit’s tip angles up, while the dull bit is inclined down.
Once all four corners have been drilled, separate the two plates and use sandpaper to smooth any splinters on the back of the plates. Next, clamp only the bottom plate to the workbench.
Punch and drill the four highlighted holes on the bottom plate with the size H (17/64”) drill bit. After drilling, unclamp the plate and clean up any splinters on the back.
Reclamp the part to the workbench, using the #7 (closest fraction size 13/64”), punch, drill, and sand the 16 highlighted holes on the bottom plate.
One last time, reclamp the bottom plate to the workbench. Using the 5/16” drill bit, punch, drill, and sand the final 4 highlighted holes on the bottom plate.
When all holes have been drilled, peel off the paper from the board and use sandpaper to get rid of any splinters.
Using both wood clamps, clamp the top plate to the workbench.
With the 5/16” drill bit, punch, drill, and sand the 4 highlighted holes.
With the #20 (closest fraction 11/64”) drill bit, punch, drill, and sand the 4 highlighted holes.
Use the punch and hammer to indent the large hole in the center of the top plate. Start by drilling a ¼” hole with the ¼ drill bit. Gradually step up drill bit sizes using ½”, ⅝”, ¾”, ⅞”, 15/16”, and 1” inch sized bits to carefully increase the size of the center hole to the final 1” size.
The drill bits used to drill this hole are shown here:
Unclamp the plate, peel off the paper and sand down any splinters.
Now both plates are complete! :)
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