Help: Need advice for a friend hopefully someone with experience using a dremel can answer this

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Do the job for her with your router. I think the dremel is not the right tool for the task, but could probably work if done correctly. If she won't listen to you, what makes you think she will listen to us?

Reply to
Frank Ketchum

Do the job for her with your router. I think the dremel is not the right tool for the task, but could probably work if done correctly. If she won't listen to you, what makes you think she will listen to us?

Reply to
Frank Ketchum

Then my advice is:

Let her try.

Reply to
Dave Balderstone

That is a great goal.

Yea, I get a big kick out of those bits of fantasy.

But, commercials are selling a dream...so of COURSE it looks fantastic. I should say that the dremel is not a bad tool for what it does...but, as with others in this thread, I have to laugh at the idea of cutting the planned dadoes with it. On the positive side, at least it will keep her out of trouble and off the streets for QUITE a long time.

Well, she probably won't want to use it after the first groove. If she is serious about expanding her building skills, I would suggest that she invest in a decent router. I would not recommend Sears, but Dewalt makes a nice one. I, personally have used the Porter Cable 690 for some time, and, find it a REALLY nice tool. I would not buy it new, either. I would either see about getting one off Ebay, or, spend some time haunting the Pawn shops in your area. They always have a handful of routers, and, as long as it sounds ok, it probably is. Also, although they hate for it to become widespread news, if the tool is on the shelf out front, they want to get anything for it they can, which means that the price ON the tool is negotiatable. By the by...as others have said...it won't be TOO dangerous (assuming she wears eye protection and hearing protection

- which she should do ANYWAY), but it will be slow, and the dadoes she produces will likely be ugly. Oh yea...if she DOES plan to push ahead with the dremel, I would suggest that she cut the outer edges of the dado first, then, clean out between. Regards Dave Mundt

Reply to
Dave Mundt

I've done a little cutting with a Dremel. Limited usefulllness, but handy for the "right" job.

Remember growing up and your mother told you not to touch the electric fence or your father told you not to hold the spark plug wire as you pulled the cord, or a couple of dozen other things you just had to experience? Same deal here.

Safety is not an issue if done properly Wear safety glasses, slow feed rate, etc.

The problem is not the tool but your friend. My guess is that she has the tool and is determined to get the job done. Nothing you do or say is going to dissuade her. However, you can be confident that she will soon learn her lesson. You can suggest she try her technique on a scrap of wood first. Three hours later, when she is on pass number 63, she may finally concede the Dremel is just not the right tool. Ed

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

So take up inlay work. With a base to turn it into a mini-router, it's quite a useful tool for small jobs like this.

Personally I'd much rather have a hanging motor and flexi shaft, like a Foredom, rather than a hand-held motor like a Dremel.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Imagine both spin clockwise, to avoid left-hand collet threads. Anyone operating either should work at arm's distance, that's for sure.

Problem I've seen is the heat buildup. No great mass to soak it up, so they heat/darken/soften, and potentially break with anything more than short-term use. Attempting to use them at less than the full 23-25K rpm would be tough, given the small diameter of the bit.

Reply to
George

Seeing how you've admittedly never used a dremel, how would you know?

If safety is your overriding concern, the "safest" method for her would be to get someone else to do it. The least safest would be a real router in unsupervised, unskilled hands.

Back off, let her use her dremel, with the safety precautions already mentioned, and she will quickly learn the wisdom of using the right tool for the job while being relatively safe.

.. nuff said.

Reply to
Swingman

Try it. The concerns you're expressing here IMO reflect a lack of familiarity with the capabilities and limitations of the tool. Whatever you expect of it, I suspect you'll find that the reality is quite different.

When you say she has a "Dremel" do you mean a "Multipro" (or one of the older tools with more or less the same configuration) or an "Advantage"?

The "Advantage" with the router base is a router just like any other router. Only difference in practical terms between that and a Porter Cable or Bosch is power, features, and ease of adjustment. If she goes slowly then the Advantage should cut her grooves just fine.

If she has a "Multipro" then just tell her to use safety glasses and quit worrying about it. While it's possible to hurt yourself seriously with one if you deliberately set out to do it with a clear plan of action and a good knowledge of anatomy and don't wimp out from the pain, the only way it's likely to happen accidentally is if it manages to throw something into your eye. Anywhere else if it does anything at all it will most likely give you an itty-bitty burn--the bits do get hot--if it does manage to cut you the cut will be considerably less severe than the average cat-scratch. While it is possible to break a bit you have to work at it--get it caught in a hole and then bend it or the like, but even there you're more likely to stall the tool and if it does break the broken off part is going to remain in the hole.

The problem with using one of those for what she wants to do isn't danger, it's lack of power. Not only won't it spin a 3/4" bit, there is no way to attach one unless you take a regular router bit and grind down the shaft to

1/8 inch. The cutters that are made for it are tiny, the only ones larger than maybe 1/4" are thin saws, and the 1/4" has a depth of cut about the same as the diameter. There are grinding wheels that are larger but she wouldn't be using one of those to cut wood (she might try but she'd give up on the idea right quick) and even if she did use one, cutting wood she's just going to stall the tool, not shatter the wheel. Dremel and a couple of other companies sell router bits specifically for the MultiPro and its competitors but they are intended for modelmaking and the like and the diameters are tiny.

If she tries this with a Multipro then what is going to happen is that either she is going to develop immense patience or she is going to decide right quick that she doesn't have enough tool for the job. She's not going to get hurt unless she has quite phenomenally bad luck.

Just for hohos I tried cutting a 3/4" wide groove in a piece of 1x3 pine using a Multipro and a 1/8" diameter HSS burr (the 1/4" seems to have walked off). Didn't count the passes but it took 8 minutes to cut 3/16" deep with no sign of strain in the tool although there was little smoke coming out of the groove. No apparent burning though. Tried making one pass across a piece of lignum vitae at the same depth to see if it would cut hard stuff and it cut it just fine (it doesn't come much harder or denser than LV), no more strain than the pine, just had to feed a little slower and enjoy that marvelous aroma.

The way the router attachment is constructed by the way, the chances of it actually throwing a piece of bit at the operator in the unlikely event that it does break are pretty small. It's more likely to end up in the bottom of the cut.

Reply to
J. Clarke

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