Some of you may remember my earlier posts about building David Marks elliptical mirror. I've finally completed it. While David's program Wood Works was helpful, in no way did I proceed the way he did. For one reason or the other I changed procedures to suit my expectations, skill and tool availability. So here goes:
First, I used Autocad to both figure out the ellipses I wanted and to see for myself that a router on a jig could cut it.
Next, I made a jig to guide my router giving me the elliptical templates directly.
I made 4 elliptical templates. One for the basic shape, one each for the mirror and the panel to hold it to the frame and one to make the second part of the two step rabbet on the back.
I also made 5 templates for the individual pieces that are mitered together and give the (very) rough ellipse. 3 of those templates are mirror image.