OK so I do have way too much time on my hands. I designed and made a jig to drill 1/8" holes in the centers of Gragraves ties. Ordinarily, I use a drill press to predrill 1/8" holes in track before screwing it into the layout base.
However, I have had occasions where pre-drilling was not possible and I wanted to drill holes in ties on-the-fly. So easy enough to hand drill but my holes have not always been centered on the wood tie and I have split the wood times many many times.
TO AVOID splitting I created the "jig-to-center-drill-gargrave-ties-on-the-fly (JCDGTOF). Here are pictures of the JCDGTOF in action:
This was cut from 1/4" and 1/8" acrylic. There are 11 pieces glued together.
UPDATE
So I was having some issues gluing the acrylic pieces because the acrylic glue requires a less than tight fit so the glue can seep into the spaces. This meant that it was hard to completely center the pieces and the end supports were too loose. I modified the design and cut a glue-jig form enclosure.
Also, Ross Custom(RC) track ties are a slightly different size than the Gargraves(GG) ties and RC track has spikes! To add to the issues, the RC spikes are not uniformly placed on each tie! So I designed a slightly different JCDGTOF to accommodate the differences.
The red lines constitute the form enclosure cuts. Note the second from the top is the RC parts with the slight cut-in to provide for the spikes. The lettering is engraved on each JCDGTOF.
