I wanted a tool to help ease the hassles of assembling individual track links. I couldn't find one I liked, so I simply built my own.

My jig started life as an IKEA chopping board, after some cutting, machining, and a few bits of common hardware, this is how it turned out:



The polyethylene material resists pretty much any chemicals a modeller is ever likely to throw at it. Even CA adhesive can't stick to this, which is why I had to assemble it using fasteners.

For those interested, I created a video to fully detail the construction of this jig, and demonstrate its use: https://youtu.be/BGDpVvuYbUs

Cheers!

That looks like an excellent tool for aligning anything that is supposed to align straightly.

Bravo!

Nice! ⚙

Rob,
That is a stroke of genius and a thing of beauty. You should think of selling the design to Hold N' Fold or a similar company, because I want to buy one and I'm sure a lot of other modelers would, too. Yours is much better than other track jigs I've seen.

Thank you all very much.

As this jig took form, I did give thought to offering them for sale. As it is though, I get so little time to enjoy my hobbies; I'd hate to further reduce my free time with another commercial venture. In my video and on my Blog, I've given ample information for anyone to build something similar. I hope some of you do give it a shot, and, by all means, show us how yours turns out.

Hello Rob, thanks for the link. Just the perfect DYI trick to save money.

excellent jig there would be really handy.

Robert

Hi Rob, Looks great - thanks for the video, too.

I'd love to try assembling one.

Can you provide dimensions? What is the thickness of the cutting board you based the jig on? It looks like it's only around 15mm? was the Ikea cutting board (only) that thick?

I appreciate you resurrecting this thread, oh mighty necromancer, as I had not seen the video myself and could use the info.

However, due to the age of the thread and the infrequency of Rob's posts, I daresay he may not respond anytime soon.

This is brilliant! I'm going to ask my neighbor if he could design and print something like this.

I was just browsing the forums and stumbled on it. I looked at the IKEA site and think I found the cutting boards he used. I’ll have to give it a try. :