Today I made some progress on the skimmer body, which will be made from 8" extruded acrylic. The piece that I ordered was 24" long and will need to be cut down into the collection cup and the skimmer body. In order to do this I made a jig out of MDF to hold the acrylic tube in place on the table saw. Rather than sliding the tube across the table I placed it over the lowered blade and raised the blade height to make the cut. I recommend having a second person to assist in holding the piece as the blade is being raised.
Stop the saw once the blade reaches its maximum height before removing the tube. Lower the blade and rotate the tube 90deg and repeat until the tube is cut all the way around.
The edge of the tube was quite rough and there were a cuts that didn't line up.....so off to the router table to clean up the edges.
I clamped a guide to the router table, and decided that I could use the same jig from the table saw to slide the edge across the router bit. When cleaning the edges up on the router table the key is use multiple light passes rather than a single pass. The tube needed to be rotated several times within the jig in order to make it all the way around.
Here is a shot of the flush trim bit I used. In order to use this bit for this cut I needed to remove the bearing from the top, or you could use a regular mortising bit.
