The Woodshop Shed

Optical Center Punches

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


I had 2 long range projects going in the shop. Now that the marble machine is finished and the other one has paint drying, I got back to making these 2 optical center punches. I was a lost on what to use for the center clear rod with cross hairs and then I found a piece of clear plastic rod in my plastic cut offs drawer and tried it out in a wood block. I thought it would be too dark to see the cross hairs down at the bottom of the hole, but it is amazing how bright the lines show up with this rod sitting on top of the piece to be punched. That rod must amplify the light down the tubeThese two are made from Brazilian rosewood with a brass sleeve pressed in the center. The center punches are hardened tool steel so they can be used on steel as well as wood. The clear plastic rods are highly polished on the ends with commercial plastic polish used for epoxy table tops and the cross hairs were scratched into them in the milling machine. The wood is finished with EEE and Shellawax

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