holding fixture

[Michigan Flinter]

  I am progressing on this southern mountain kit for my friend and am ready to bandsaw for the cresent butt plate.It is a precarved stock. How do you folks keep the stock square to the blade so you don't take more material off one side than the other? Do you have some kind of fixture that the stock is held in or do you just wing it? All responces are appreciated.  Eric D. Lau   Riverdale MI.

[Bill of the 45th]

Eric, I cut a wedge out of a scrap of 2x4, then give it a slight shallow concave with a rasp.  I then duct tape it to the stock.  that gives me roughly a 4" wide flat surface for the table of the saw.  That's what I did on Saturday when I cut mine, and it worked well.  Just take your time with setting it up.  When You cut, leave your pencil line on the stock, that gives you room to adjust.  Good luck

Bill

[Tim Crosby]

 You could forget the band saw and lock it up in a vice  and use a coarse toothed hack saw.

Tim C.

[Jerry V Lape]

I would think about cutting well outside the line and then using  a drum sander to remove the balance of the wood down to the scribed line which itself would be a little outside the anticipated finished inletted line.  And the block Bill described above would be useful in both the cutting and working on the drum sander. 

[Bill of the 45th]

After I made my first post, I went out to my building shed, after it warmed up to zero.  I found a similar wedge I had used a couple of years ago.  The wedges was flat, but had four of those self stick rubber bumps you put on the bottom of stuff to keep it from  scratching.  two were about an fat inch apart at the wrist area, and two were about  where the heal and toe are.  Again this was taped to the stock to give you a flat to work with.  Off subject Eric, I did get out to practice for the York today as it was calm, but needed snowshoes, and laid out on top of the shooting bench.  It was a balmy ten degrees by two o'clock, and calm.

Bill