Note: I wrote more than I intended to. If you have lots of important things to do, you should probably skip this post.
I like to try to amuse those who have tried to teach me so much. I am in the process of building the DP Baseboard that Mike M. termed the "Baseboard of my dreams". That's an exaggeration of course, but it has a ring to it that I like. The kind poster who posts as morgans should get most of the credit for putting the idea for this DP baseboard in my head in the first place.
If you cut 2by8s into five 30" pieces, and line them side-to-side with 2 or 3 pipe clamps you may get 30" by 36 1/8" or 30" by 36 3/16" surface, depending on which sides you measure. I use 30" above only in a nominal way. I measured and cut a 30" piece from a 2by8, then cut four more that were about the same size (it was a matter of pride at the time, a few months ago when I cut the stuff with my CS, that I didn't use a ruler). I bought some 2by4's (2)to at the same time I bought the 2by8s. Originally, I was going to put these all the way around, under the edge of the "surface", but in the end I decided to just put them under the sides. It's a good thing too, as one of these 2by4's virtually turned itself into an "S". It happened to contain the "pith" of the tree. I'll try to avoid such lumber in the future.
Lacking a real workbench, today I clamped my surface together on saw horses as described at the top of the paragraph above. Then I clamped a
36+" piece of 2by4 underneath one side using four 6" F-clamps--2 on each end. Enter router (DeWalt 2 1/4hp). I made a few practice passes with it using a round-over bit yesterday to get a feel for it--it cut easier than I expected. Relatively quiet too compared to my Delta 12.5" bench planer which I used to smooth one side of my 2by4 pieces, where the bearing would rest. Now I was using a 2" long straight bit with a bearing. The amount of wood I was trying to chomp off the end grain of the 2by8 pieces varied from board to board, but wasn't greater than about 1/4" by 1 7/16" height (I realize now this is a little too much). It wasn't too long that my bit froze (stopped turning), and it wasn't too many seconds later that I thought I saw the bit fly! If it freezes again I'll stop and do an inspection. I expected to find the bit against the wall, but it was only a foot or two away from where I was standing. It got thrown, or dropped, into the piece of carpet I was standing on. Enter an opportunity for some soul-searching. I regrouped, and was even more attentive/vigilant, and had a new decidedly-favorite side of the router to stand on (behind it). I moved the F clamps around and finished "straightening" the side. Then I used the (3/8") roundover bit. There were a several places where it didn't look so good--remnants from my use of the straight bit: where the router bumped into a clamp, in between boards, and in particular where I was trying to take off too much wood (I think) with --I was left with some deep gouges. I knew the roundover bit wouldn't cover-up each problem I created with the straight-bit, but it helped.
My wife thought it looked good. I thought it looked acceptable. I ate dinner, and went back and completed the other side (straightened and rounded over). Also rounded over the front. Then it occurred to me (duh..), I went back to the first side, re-clamped the 2by4 1/8" further in, straightened the side to erase my previous errors (I know Larry would have given me hell about them) and redid the first side, leaving far less evidence of my router-newbyness.
Some other things I learned:
- I like the "soft-start" feature of the router
- Try to make use of the variable speed feature
- Start close to the the edge, so the amount of "climbing" you might do is minimal
- Be damn careful about "climbing cuts", like the books say!
- I can see why people like having more than 1 router:
Every time I needed to switch to a round-over bit, I need to un-attach the power to the router, remove eye and ear protection (dust mask was constant), extract the router motor from the base, find and put on a leather glove :), loosen the collet, remove the straight bit, insert the roundover bit in the collet, pull it out 1/16", tighten the collet, remove glove, put motor back in base, adjust height of bit, look for eye and ear protection, verify power switch is off, attach power to the router, and proceed. I left out a few steps, but you get the idea. Similar for switching back to the straight bit! It seemed a bit tiresome to me that there was so much process to this..
So, as you can see, it was a decent learning experience. Sorry to post so many words; I hope my post helps somebody learn how to change router bits! ;) I'll post a pic when I'm finished. Regards,
Bill