Routing
This week we were tasked with learning the wood cutting router! Pretty awesome honestly. I went with the table mounted method for cutting material away in such a way to create a path/ditch, maybe for cables or... a butter dish! Making a cavity, if you will.
MATERIAL AND TOOLS
First thing’s first! Here’s the tools of the trade, the job, the MISSION. Got my router, got the plate for mounting it to the work bench, ear protection, the necessary wrenches.
Next I needed some wood! My plan was to route up through the wood to create a cavity. This one would do nicely, but I didn’t need all this material and it was pretty nice wood so..
I chopped it! Got a good little slice with that irregularity in place so my silly little experiment wouldn’t be too wasteful.
Next I wanted to set up my wood so my routing would be about in center. I honestly didn’t really care about perfect center but I just didn’t want to splinter! Looks set up to me.
SET UP
The method: Start with a very shallow cut. Start to increase depth as I go. Putting the cutting bit on was easy peasy, there I am with a thumbs up indicating as such.
Refer back to my lining up the wood for the routing if you will. You’ll notice I had the wood on the left. Leia (Shop staff, homie, cool dude etc etc) did a good job of letting me know the rotation of the bit is going to NOT like me approaching from the left. So here we go. No longer dangerous.
CUTTING
HERES A VIDEO OF ME DOING IT :)
I’m two passes in and I FUCKED UP. On my first pass it was easy enough. Run the wood over the bit, then pull it back and turn off the machine. This time I realized that the level at the back of the work table isn’t perfect and pulling back means th ebit might very well not follow the freshly cut path and just hit the material the wrong way. This is what happened there. LEARNING MOMENT! onwards. And from now on I make my cut, stop pushing the material, turn off the router and wait until it fully stops to thenmove my material.
Here you’ll see the deepest I set my bit at.
RESULT
