How to make wooden gears. This page also available in Spanish Some people are intimidated at the prospect of making their own wooden gears for the screw advance box joint jig. So I figured I'd cover the topic of gear making in a bit more detail. You can click on any image in this article to get a larger view. The method I use to make the gears for the box joint jig is the same as for the gears for the wooden router lift, but I'll focus on the ones for the box joint jig in this article. It's vital to use good plywood for the gears. Ordinary spruce or fir plywood has layers that are too coarse, and the wood is not strong enough. Start by making a template for the gear shape. Glue the paper template onto a piece of birch plywood about 10 mm (3/8") thick. Next, use an awl to punch a divot in the center between every two gear teeth.
The divots made with the awl help to center the point of the drill on every hole. After cutting the sides of the teeth, I trim all the teeth to length. It's always fun to see the sparks fly. Gear template generator. This free online gear template generator is designed for making scale accurate paper gear templates which you can glue onto wood and then cut out with a bandsaw. I recommend printing the gears with an ink jet printer. Even cheap ink jet printers print very scale accurate but Not all laser printers are accurate. You can still access the old (pre 2015) Flash based gear geberator Getting the printout to scale correctly, avoiding cropping Different browsers print at different scales depending on browser type and printer configuration.
Use an ink jet printer I recommend using an ink jet printer. Printing the gear templates To print the gear template, use the 'Print' button, instead of printing the web page from the browser. The gear generator program that I created and sell doesn't need the scale calibration, and can paginate across many pages for larger gears. Some notes about gear design and this gear template generator This gear template generator generates shapes for involute spur gears. Wooden combination lock. Worm Gear Speed Reducer. Wood Roller Chain. Simplicity Variant - Homemade Plywood - Introduction.