Celtic knot tutorial
This isn't rocket science but some folks asked how to do Celtic rings/knots so, here is a short tutorial. You can do this a number of different ways and on various projects.
Get your self a hunk of wood and square it up on the sides and the ends.
The next part is about cutting the slots for ring material. The pictures will show using a TS but it can be done on various other tools as well. For instance if I want smaller thickness rings I use the bandsaw by tilting the table, using a stop block and the miter gauge. (if you have questions about this let me know)
Here you set the blade depth just shy of cutting through the blank. For the screwdrivers an 1/8" shy of a through cut or thereabouts works fine.
Set you miter gauge for the desired angle (I use 25-35 degree cuts) and set your miter gauge stop.
Slap your blank in place, clamp and cut.
Now you'll need your ring material. Here is some maple cut to the correct thickness.
Cut the ring material to the correct length and glue it in the blank.
Clean-up any overhang with a chisel or block plane.
You are now going to repeat the cut, glue, and clean-up on the other 3 sides. Make sure all the cuts reference the same stop and are cut at the same angle. You'll also notice sometimes it is helpful to use a second clamp to keep the glue-up square and straight. Here are some more pics:
When your done with all 4 sides you'll have a square block that looks like the picture below. The round blanks are what that square blank looks like after being roughed out.
Lastly some finished stuff with Celtic Rings/Knots:
A note about the 25-35 degree angle which the blank is cut and the insets are glued in:
The total band width gets larger or narrower depending on the angle of the cut.
This pic shows 4 screwdriver handles. The 3rd one is cut at 25 and the others at 35 degrees:
Obviously the thickness of the individual rings is controlled by the kerf of the blade used to cut the slots. Therefore on small stuff like pens etc. cutting the slots with a thin kerf blade on a bandsaw is the way to go to keep them proportional to the total piece.
