WindFire Designs Circle Tools

Stainless steel circle templates for every maker.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics

Circles are hot. Stainless steel is cool.

WindFire Designs Circle Tools are made for beautiful circles. Specifically designed for countless uses, they provide elegant and precise utility.

Graceful progressions of sizes in curated sets of circles find a balance of scale between the maker, the studio, and the work.

Quickly center circles within circles using nested inner and outer perimeters. Use both the inside and the outside edges during design, marking, alignment, and fabrication.

Made from low-conduction, hard stainless steel which provides durable guides for blade cutting and leaves heat in the tips of hot cutting instruments for consistent beautiful lines, clean edges and rapid cuts.

Ergonomic and stable, they stay right where they're placed—leaving your work visible, your body safe and out of the way.

Beautiful archival tools, made for many lifetimes of service, and to be passed down through generations.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool CTØ11 detail image showing the quarters halves and thirds marks

Two models, sized around making.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics this image shows the two sizes
WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics

Scaled to the maker, the studio, and the work.

Above, model CTØ7. Originally designed around the requirements of a kite maker's studio, its bisector markings allow semi-circles and quickly finding centers.

Below, model CTØ11, a larger tool designed for greater range. In addition to bisectors, it adds markings for quarters and the elusive thirds divisions.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics hero shot

Marked for precision

Unlike more common surface-etched marks, the reference marks on WindFire Designs Circle Tools are micro-welded below surface level.

In fact, the marks in the stainless steel are made first. Then, without moving, the tool is cut. This means their alignment is absolute, and their durability is unmatched.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from leather for leather work

Use them to design.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics drafing a foil vent
WindFire Designs Circle Tool cutting rib template for ram air foil kite WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics shown here with a foil rib and foil rib template with circle cutouts
WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template centering marks

Use them with heat.

Below we demonstrate how to make a reinforcement around a hole in fabric. When cutting with heat, we recommend cutting a synthetic material on a tempered glass surface. The red shown here is self-adhesive polyester with a paper backing.

Use an industrial hot knife, or a simple 15w-45w soldering iron to cut almost any synthetic cloth or film. Below, we glide through the polyester, leaving paper backing uncut.

hot cutting circles in dacron windfire circle tool
windfire circle tool hot cutting circles in dacron windfire circle tool hot cutting circles in dacron

Sewing in circles.

Place your circles precisely. Hot or cold cut perfect circles from almost any cloth. Spray adhesive, or sometimes soapy water can be used to keep them in place.

Adjust your stitching to fit the margin and radially sew around the circle. Use the WindFire Circle Tool to draw a pencil line showing the inner circle as a sewing guide.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool sewing dacron circle reinforcements
WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template sewing a fabric circle Sewing dacron reinforcement 2
windfire circle tool hot cutting circles in dacron
wfd CT011

Natural increments.

The inner size of each circle matches the outer perimeter of the next size down. We included a tool offset to account for the working tips of your instruments. Concentric alignment is fast and precise.

For wider margins, simply skip sizes. Alignment is nearly effortless. The ability to work with either the inside or the outside perimeters of the circles means your work, and your fingers are protected.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for hot and cold cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics showing full range of sizes for fabric stepped down reinforcments of corners with circles
WindFire Designs Circle Tool cutting and sewing ripstop circles to make the clew on fabric cutting circles from fabrics like dacron and other synthetics cutting ripstop nylon circles closeup with xacto knife

Circles with your favorite instruments.

As a stainless steel template, WindFire Designs Circle Tools provide confident guides for all kinds of drawing and cutting, hot or cold.

 

windfire designs circle tool showing with many possibilities for use
Buy WindFire Designs Circle Tools

Buy WindFire Designs Circle Tools

Comfortable in the studio.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool show in use in a painters studio with a pallet knife for oil paint

WindFire Designs Circle Tools are impervious to almost everything. They stand up to heat, paints, ceramics, and all kinds of chemicals and solvents.

Smooth stainless steel releases almost any kind of pigment or ink when it's wiped away while wet. Markings remain untouched even after heavy cleaning is required.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template ruth whiting painting with red and after it wipes clean with all kinds of solvents WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template used with green oil paint

Around the corners.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool shown as a quick way to mark a radius the corner of plywood

The open design of the WindFire Circle Tool never leaves you blind to your work.

Quickly radius all kinds of objects using all kinds of tools.

windfire designs circle tool paper scissors rounded corners windfire designs circle tool leather blade rounded corners
The WindFire Designs Circle Tool metal circle guide for xacto blades

Find your centers.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool Model CTØ7 provides markings for bisection on each of the seven sizes. Mark the midway points, rotate a bit, and mark them again. X the lines to find center for any size.

Make custom templates and alignment guides for registering placement throughout your workflow.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool showing marking at the halfs to find the center of the circle with an x WindFire Designs Circle Tool showing the center of a circle found by an X

WindFire Designs Circle Tool Model CTØ11 includes markings for halves, quarters, and also thirds divisions.

On both models, a tool offset is built into every circle. Once a circle is drawn or cut, margins are visible on both the outer and inner edges of adjacent sizes.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool showing markings and increments for the larger metal circle template

Use WindFire Designs Circle Tools behind translucent materials to align your work.

Visual centering is fast and consistent—perfect for working with adhesives.

The WindFire Designs Circle Tool provides a confident guide for placment Placing an adhesive reinforcement cut with the circle tool
Natural incremental sizes of the CT07 The WindFire Designs Circle Tool provides a confident guide full range of sizes

Lonely Bird approved.

WindFire Designs Circle Tool Lonely Bird helps with tape WindFire Designs Circle Tool Lonely Bird helps with tape

Precision — large and small

WindFire-Designs-Circle-Tool-Line-Window WindFire Designs Circle Tool reinforcement carbon rod through sail
WindFire Designs Circle Template with full range of sizes in pencil WindFire Designs Circle Tool double tape film hot cutting

Choose your sizes.

Rather than progressions of arbitrary sizes based on metric or imperial units, WindFire Designs Circle Tools use a parametric rule set developed around studio utility.

We looked at the largest and the smallest sizes and allowed all the dimensions of the tools to form around the functions. The two models have two different sets of sizes designed to complement each other.

WindFire Designs Metal Circle Tool Template for leather work, fabrics of all kinds, woodshops that need circle guides, and any maker that loves a good tool

WindFire Designs Circle Tools — CTØ7 & CTØ11

Two models of the WindFire Designs Circle Tools available - Buy now

Buy WindFire Designs Circle Tools

Designed by Tim Elverston and Mark Whiting at WindFire Designs.

Finished by hand at WindFire Designs. Made from 304 stainless steel entirely in the USA.

All content on the WindFire Designs domain is © 2000 — © ∞