As I got more into making bowls, I found I needed a large compass for striking arcs with 10-15″ radii. A quick search yielded the usual Harbor Freight options (not actually terrible, but not quite big enough), and some hardware from Lee Valley that’s probably amazing, but $70 for a compass? I don’t have that kind of cash… but I do have a hardware store nearby and a 3d printer in my basement!

I designed the plastic parts to hold sections of 3/8″ dowel (10 mm should work just fine) and use M5 metric hardware. I also was happy to use the safety wire pliers I’d picked up years ago, but 5-minute epoxy would also work perfectly well to hold the dowels to the various plastic bits. For probably $10 in parts, many of which you might already have hanging around your shop, you can have a compass of pretty much any size you like – just scale the lengths of dowel up or down.

All the files, including the original SOLIDWORKS parts as well as the STL files for printing (without CAD) are up here on Printables.