Asquared
13th August 1999, 02:52 AM
I'm making a decorative top for a table and I want to have a radiating pattern like the sun. I have a round center piece from which I want to have radiating segments. Based on the width of my timber and the size of the work I have decided to cut ten segments per quarter circle. It is also a nice round number if you'll pardon the pun. That means each piece will be 9 degrees of arc. Now, being a particularly smart bloke who remembers his sixth form trigonometry I've determine the tangent of 9 degrees to be 0.1584. So I was able to mark out the angle off a straight side of my timber by coming in 158 mm over a 1 metre length. BUT it all seemed rather difficult and I was wondering if there isn't some very clever way to set out various angles (and cut them) without all the fancy math. I figured I could cut a template from cardboard (or similar) but then I need to set that out first. Another reason I'd like an alternative approach is that I thought it would be athesically pleasing to have the grain run parallel with the center line of the segments as opposed to parallel to one side of the segments. This turns out to be more wasteful of the timber though so I probably will sacrifice athesics for economics.
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Andrew Armstrong
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Andrew Armstrong