Rounding over 1/4" thick wood

[Thomas Mitchell]

Here's an example of my ignorance due to inexperience. I designed a toy passenger train car to have a top of walnut that's 1/4" thick rounded over with a 1/4" round over bit. Looks very nice on paper.

Tonight I took some walnut, plained it, resawed it, plained it again to the right thickness, joined it, cut the walnut, not necessarily in any particular order, but I came out with about 30 nice 2 3/4" x 1 1/2" x

1/4" rectangles. I was happy with the way the triangles turned out and the amount of time it took to make them. One last thing for the night. Just round over the top edges. 1/4" roundover bit in the router table, voila. Wood isn't thick enough to roll along the bearing thingie of the router bit, so it keeps kicking out. I tried a 1/8" bit and that works, but the appearance is less than desirable. A 3/8" bit was a little better but not THE look. Does anyone know of a way to round these rectangles over and save the 1.5 hours I spent making them? I'd hate for them to end up being part of the wife's craft supplies, but as long as they are used.

[JackD]

They sound kind of small to work with. Here are my suggestions: Attach them to something thicker when you run the router. (this ould be a pain) Sand them. Use a plane.(the end grain would be tough but you could plane the sides and sand the ends)

-Jack

[Igor]

How about a hot glue gun? Glue the pieces with hot melt glue to a larger board. Route, then pop them off the board. Personally, the image of routing wood pieces that size gives me the shakes.

[Upscale]

If you have a Dremel on hand, I believe there's smaller round over bits that you can use for it. In effect, a small router for small pieces.

[Andy Dingley]

Running those through a router table is going to cost you fingers !

I'd use some really coarse (40 grit) sandpaper wrapped _tightly_ around a block.Walnut is pretty soft and it won't take that long. Alternatively a block plane (low angle, for preference) but even that usually manages to slice a fingernail.

If you must do it on a router table, you need a zero-clearance false fence made especially for that cutter (feed the cutter into it to cut the shape). Even then it's a little hazardous, so you should make a rectangle-shaped push block to hold each piece firmly and keep your fingers away.

With hindsight of course, you make stock like this by shaping a long length and then crosscutting it down.

[George]

Yep. Ad Hoc fence cut with a notch to fit the bearing, then centered, clamped on one end, and brought gently into the rotating bit so there is virtually no gap on either side. Help the pieces past the bit by using a push fixture rabbetted to a depth a touch less than the thickness of the piece, at the proper angle, and big enough or fitted with a handle to keep your fingers at a distance.

[Andy Dingley]

You saw a slot for the bearing first.

I'm also not that keen on the idea of routing the end-grain ends. Maybe if you clamped them all into a jig - otherwise I'd expect trouble with the grain breaking out.

[Andy Dingley]

You can take the bearing off. If you have a fence, you don't need it anyway. If I'm using a roundover as a moulding bit, and I want to leave a quirk, then this is an easy way to make it cut a little deeper.

[ace]

You could cut a mortise into a 3/4 thick board that the parts would fit in and then run it on the router table.

[Thomas Mitchell]

[Steve]

Radi-plane.

[Kim Whitmyre]

Just use the fence on the router table. . .First set up the fence to align with the bearing using a nice straight piece of stock, then clamp the fence down and run the project thru.

Kim

[CW]

Forget the bearing, use the fence.

[adb]

Have you tried backing up the piece with some scrap? That may help in avoiding blowing out the endgrain when doing the roundover... (just a thought)

-adb