S-B.com is the first site I found about plug building and I would like to thank everyone for being so generous with the sharing of plug building know how. I have learned a lot here and would like to contribute any way I can.
Most of the following step by step will not be anything new to most of you but hopefully it will help someone.
What follows is a step by step I use for making a jointed pikie.
The first photo shows a completed body turned and marked for joint location, belly hole, eyes, and lip cut. If I am going to make a run of several, I can mark the first one only and then use stop blocks on the drill press and band saw so I don’t have to mark them all.
The next step is to drill the belly hole and eyes. After this is done, it’s off to the band saw to cut the lip slot.
The next step is to cut the joint location on a 45 angle on the tablesaw. To do this I clamped an extension piece to my miter gage and marked it to line up the plug. I also use this piece to set the height of the blade. I flip the plug and make two cuts on each side.
Notice that I line up the mark on the plug with the mark on the miter gage extension.
Now I cut the top half of the square end off so it is not in the way for cutting the scalloped head.
To do the scallop, I use a very simple jig along with a pattern bit on my router table. The jig has a dowel drilled in the bottom that is an exact fit for the belly hole. This acts as a registration point even if the blanks are not cut to the same exact length. The pattern bit has a bearing at the bottom that won’t allow you to cut off any more than the shape of the pattern. This makes it easy to get the same shape on all your pikies.
Now the plug is ready to be cut at the joint. After the plug is in 2 parts, I cut the squared ends off and the drill for the thru wire. I put the chin weight in the thru wire hole using a tail weight, but if you prefer a bottom mounted weight, you can add that hole during the drilling of the eyes and belly hole.
