simple jig for holding hydro oriented plugs square

[Diggin Jiggin]

I am working on my first darter. I wanted to hydro orient it, as it will be unweighted and I wanted to do what I could to get them to sit right. So after I cut off the square ends of the stock and floated it to find what side was up, I was trying to think of a way to work with the round blank as I've had more than my share of shop 'incidents' and I want to use the table saw to cut the lip slot.

I know rockfish9 had a slick jig for the bandsaw that used the belly hole & a dowel but I wanted something that would work on the table saw and the drill press too.

So I was looking for a way to hold the blank steady with the hyrdo oriented side up. My band saw blade was dull from cutting lead tail weights to length (lets not go there) and it burned the ends of the stock where I trimmed the off the blank. When I looked at the end from the head stock, I noticed the circle is the same diamater as the blank and since I had already center drilled it, it already had a pilot hole that was dead center to the blank. So here's what I did.

I knocked off two sides of the cutoff end so they were flush with the size of the blank.

Then on the back I used a countersink so that I could insert a screw slightly larger than the belly hole that would let me rotate the plug right side up & then tighten the screw so the blank is square.

With the 2 sides of the end of the stock trimmed off, the plug sits flush on both its belly or its side. So I can work with it on the tablesaw, bandsaw and drillpress. I hate to tell you how long it took to think of such an obvious solution...