Has anyone made their own template for studding a track? What type of material did you use?

Thanks

I had a couple different templates I did up to try and get the most scratch lines. All I did was take a piece of wood that was the width of the track and skinny enough to fit between lugs and drilled through the wood for the template. Once the hole were in the wood I use chalk(or anything else to mark the track) and then begin drilling. Worked pretty slick.

Yep, took a piece of flat 2"steel stock either an 1/8 or 1/4 inch will work, (homedepot, menards lowes all have it) and cut it 18 inches long. Stick 1 1/2 inches of each end in a vice and bend it over 90 degrees . this should leave you with 15 inches in the middle. Take it over to your track and it should drop right down over your 15 inch track in between the raised lugs, with approx. an 1/12 hanging down on either side!-to anchir it in place.
You need to mark this steel template with some chalk take it back to the vice and drill through the steel where you want your pattern holes to be.
For the 3 studs per panel (144 studs) that I put in mine, we had a series of holes, and flipped the bar end for end every otyher panel to give us the "stagger" on the studs that you need. You lay the template on the track and run your 7mm track cutter through the holes in the template. (this will all make more sense I think when your looking at it, as opposed to here in writing, I'll have to see if i can get a picture of it to post.... It works slick, very durable, and costs under 3 bucks..... DooZ :p

I used a wooden yardstick with great success.... looked just like what I imagine Dooz's description looks like, except made from wood, and I used a paint marker to mark the spots on the track then drill them all at once.

pattern ? i though it was just in,mini,mini,mo ???

for the short $$ go buy one!
go to the home depot and make one! more time on your hands than i ever want to have!

I made mine outa aluminum coil stock worked great. i have a 192 stud pattern. i think i used card board or paper to make a pattern then traced it on the the coil stock.

Take your templates and throw them in the garbage.
All you have to do is pick the pattern you want and go for it!
Studding is not a beauty pagent, the uglyer the better. Your hole shots will love you!

templates make it faster and besides you want your studs in the patter to not line up with other studs, just drillin holes won't work how ya know if there not lining up with another stud? the best traction is done by as few repeated studs as possiable in your design.

When you stud you jack the sled up so it's at eye level so you can look down the length of the track. This way you can see several set's of your pattern and eyeball the drill so you hardly ever repeat. With the "perfect" template you repeat scratch lines way too many times. :nervous:

Repetetive info, but a pretty good article



http://www.snowtechmagazine.com/articles/t...n/traction.html (http://www.snowtechmagazine.com/articles/traction/traction.html)

If you are inexperienced at studding a sled then a template is the only way to go. But if you no what you are dooing and had experience studding I thing that dooing it free hand with a good pattern with the most scratch lines as possible will be better.