Making a Chatter Tool

Excerpts from the Messageboards

John Lucas

By far the easiest way is to take a jig saw blade, grind the teeth off and clamp it in a pair of vice grips. Quick, easy and effective. Be sure to practice. It only works on end grain and there is a learning curve.

Below is a picture of 2 of my chatter tools. The top one is a mild steel bar that was cut with the jigsaw. I put a steel spacer from Lowes around the bar and drilled and tapped it. Then put a homemade knob in to hold the jigsaw blade.

The other uses a commercially made blade mounted in a homemade bar.

John Trant

With your information, I quickly made an excellent chatter tool as illustrated in the picture below. I cut a 1" slot into the end of a 5-1/2" length of 5/8" mild steel rod (Home Depot) using a thin cut-off blade. I drilled and tapped two holes for a pair of 10-32 set screws to hold the chatter blade. I used a pair of screws to prevent the chatter blade from rotating within the slot. The chatter blade was made from a 2-1/2" length of a 1/2" bandsaw blade. I ground off the teeth, ground a triangular tip and bent it up about 15 degrees. I tried it out and it works great!! I will reduce the length of the rod so that I can attach a wooden handle to make it a bit more attractive. It took less than an hour to fabricate, test, and modify.

Boy, that was fun!