I'm looking to renovate a couple of garden benches by replacing the slats. These are wide benches so the standard kits of slats are not long enough.
I have some hardwood planks that are suitable but would need to have the edges rounded.
I am considering a router. Can someone point me in the direction of a cheap and cheerful router that would do the job.
What's wrong with using a plane and a bit more elbow grease?
I would also go with planing if only a couple of planks. If never used a router before you may not get the desired effect, it took me few goes when I first used one.
To be fair pretty much any small router will make an easy job of this kind of task if equipped with a bearing guided roundover cutter.
An entry level 1/4" collet machine like:
any 1/4" router should do that easily. The other option is a (vintage) moulding plane. They're very cheap.
NT
+1
Coupla things: wood often planes better in one direction, depending on the grain. (Same goes for routing...) Planing leaves shavings, routing blows dust and chips everywhere. A flat plane is sufficient to round off the edge of a board, a moulding plane is not necessary.
If it's a small radius, a block of wood, coarse sandpaper and elbow grease will do the job, for more effort -- but less time and money, once you factor in getting the router (or plane:-), learning how to use it etc.
Routing can leave you with dark/burnt spots that take a surprising amount of sanding to get out.
Thomas Prufer
+1 to all that
I can't believe nobody else has suggested it - Angle Grinder! In this case with a sanding disk. I find this combination a much-underrated woodworking tool, for outdoor woodwork at any rate.
Those poly disc paint removal discs are a revelation - really very good for stripping paint surprisingly gently - especially when its got to the "starting to flake, and over painting is not going to be an option" stage.
I've not heard of those - thanks for the tip! I have lots of black barge boards like that to do...
Very useful, but entirely the wrong tool for rounding board edges. Unless you really don't give a dry brown thing how they look.
NT
I've had some very good results. But I quite understand if you don't want to try it.
I have used an AG with a flap disk for woodwork on a number of occasions. They are quite good for shaping things when you need to freehand some operations. A typical example might be on things like chair legs, where you want a significant bevel on all the ends in contact with the ground to prevent the wood being split away of the chair (other other "legged" furniture gets dragged.
Can also be handy for sculpting things like chair seats. (there are some special planing / carving disks available for the purpose, and the level of control they give is surprisingly delicate)
I've some masonry paint to remove - any disc brand recommendation?
I think the first ones I tried were from toolstation, and they were surprisingly good - but they don't stock those particular ones any more.
These look similar though:
Note that I have only used them on wood and steel, where they worked and lasted well.
You may find that you get a high wear rate on masonry. A wire wheel cup brush might be better for that. (Various reviews also caution against use on metal with sharp edges).
I'm not the OP. Perhaps the OP could get a good result with an ag & sanding disc, but I've enough experience of disc sanding & ags to think the odds of that low.
NT
Grand, thanks.
The surface is a combination of fairly well stuck masonry paint, and on top a thin coat of what looks like emulsion (it obviously isn't though, maybe) that scrapes off easily - almost with a fingernail. There's also about 20% of the surface that's brick - plain weathering has taken all the paint off.
So I'm going to try a variety of tools/methods
As with any aggressive sander - light pressure and keep moving at a constant speed. For bench slats I would expect to get plenty good enough results with an AG if that was what I had to use.
For the op, who knows. Lots of not very experienced diyers took up the disc sander in the 70s, and the results were in most cases terrible. They are usable, but probably the hardest type of sander for the job.
NT
You are not comparing like with like though. A 70's disc sander was probably a backing pad stuck on the end of a B&D drill spinning at 2400 rpm.
An ungainly and difficult to use contraption, that is likely to snag and twitch all over the place. Not to mention all the reaction forces are all in the wrong directions.
A small AG is far more controllable, and more effective due to the much higher surface speed.
Still its normally fun to watch claims that something can't be done be interrupted by someone actually doing them... :-)
So here you go:
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.