I am interested in building a gazebo. There was an article written by Rolan Johnson in FW (QA: “Cutting Multi-Sided Shapes on the tablesaw”) in which Stewart Levine asks about safely cutting a 9″ wide octagon on the tablesaw. In the answer Johnson determines the width by multiplying the side of a square by 1.41 (9″x1.41= 12.69 “) & subtracting the 9″ width from 12.69″=3.69″. How did Johnson arrive at 1.41? I seem to recall an old FW article on octagons and how to determine the size of each side. Help on this great geometric shape would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks WINSWOOD
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Wiki quickie
Wikipedia can be your friend. All you ever wanted to know about octagons, including a nifty animation showing how to lay one out with a compass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octagon
without taking time to look up the article and work through the math Sqrt(2) = 1.414... That is the length of the diagonal of a unit square.
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