Back in my earliest days in the shop I hit upon the idea of building a center finder. I had seen simple designs that consisted of nothing more than a bar with three holes and a couple of pins stuck in the outer holes.
It quickly became obvious that such a design would only work well for a limited range of workpiece widths. Anything too wide to fit between the pins was right out. Thin stock would need to be very long to accommodate the center finder lying at an extreme angle.
So, I set out to build the
sine qua non of center finders with adjustable pin spacing and different sized pins to accommodate any situation. This was the result...
I ensured that the pins were equally spaced relative to the center hole by drilling the center hole first and then rotating the bar on a pin through that hole to locate the outboard holes. The central brass "finger grip" provides some extra support for the center punch to guarantee that it's perpendicular to the stock surface when struck.
The small bar screwed to the side of the stock marks the location of the center hole on the beam. I remember that it seemed terribly important at the time but now I can't remember why it's there.
Soon after building this, I discovered edge finders. Since then I doubt this tool has been used more than two or three times.
