Torquata MJ-823 Circle Cutting Guide — and the Amazon Alternative

Torquata is Timbecon’s house brand, sold direct in Australia. A circle cutting guide is a trammel: a bar fixed to the router base with a pivot pin at the other end. The pin goes in the centre of the circle, the router swings around it, and the radius is the distance between them.

The shop-made version works

It is worth saying this plainly before recommending anything. A strip of 6 mm ply or hardboard, screwed to the router base through the existing holes, with a small nail or screw through it as a pivot, cuts circles exactly as accurately as any bought jig.

It costs ten minutes and an offcut. Make one for the specific radius, use it, and throw it away or keep it.

When a bought jig earns its place

Two situations.

Repeatability. If you cut circles often, or need to hit a specific diameter that must fit something, a jig with a scale and micro-adjustment beats measuring and re-drilling a shop-made trammel.

Multiple functions. The MPOWER CRB7 scored here does circle cutting as one of seven jobs — it also works as an edge guide, a straight-line guide, a mortising jig and a trimming base. Buying one jig that covers several setups is a better argument than buying one that does circles.

Technique that matters more than the jig

Cut in several passes. A router taken through 18 mm ply in one pass will burn, chatter and possibly grab. Take 5 mm at a time.

Cut in the right direction. Going clockwise around the outside of a disc, or anticlockwise around the inside of a hole, keeps the bit pulling into the cut rather than climbing away from it.

Support the offcut. When the circle separates, the router base loses half its support. Tape the workpiece to a sacrificial board underneath, and leave the last pass until everything is held.

Pivot hole. Remember the centre gets a hole. If the circle is a visible tabletop, pivot from a sacrificial board clamped beneath instead.