Setting Router Bit Height For Cope & Stick Cuts

I was recently watching the Sommerfeld video on the tongue & groove cabinet assembly method. In that video Mark Sommerfeld mentiond dropping a grommet in the hole in the shaft of the router, to make the tongue bit bottom out at the exact same depth as the groove bit, thus allowing you to change from one bit to the other at will without having to fiddle with depth adjustments. (after the initial depth is set, of course)

Wondering if this would work with my Jesada door making set, I cut a piece of slightly undersized dowel and dropped it down in that hole. Then the sticking bit was loaded, the depth adjusted, and a cut made. After that, I removed the sticking bit and replaced it with the coping bit and made that cut without changing the depth at all.

Voila. Perfect alignment. The faces of the two pieces came together perfectly flush. No more laborious and shape-changing sanding on those corners.

Various routers will require different methods of achieving this. Mark Sommerfeld's router must have a very shallow hole in it to require only a grommet. My Bosch has a hole thats near 3" deep so something else was required, hence the dowel.

Another thing that may affect this is whether or not the cope/stick bits are made with the correct shaft lengths for this method to work. At any rate, its worth a try and will save a lot of time and aggravation for you if it does.

Reply to
LP
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Nice trick. Thanks. If they are just off a mm or so, a quick pass at the grinding wheel could even out the shaft lengths.

-j

Reply to
J

The reason he uses the rubber grommet is..... I don't think your not supposed to let your router bits bottom out in the collet. Technically yours are bottoming out on a hard piece of dowel. Robert Smith Jacksonville, Fl.

Reply to
Knotbob

Yes, i neglected to say that point was also mentioned in the video. Something about the collet 'sucking' the bit down a bit.

I suspect this sucking down is only a matter of a few thousandths and I dont know how important it is to proper gripping of the collet. It didn't seem to affect the gripping power of mine.

I realize the dowel is a bit harder than a grommet but it was what I had on hand and I felt that, with caution, it could be tried. I suppose a piece of rubber rod would be a more appropriate material and I'm on the lookout for some now.

Reply to
LP

Try putting a little dab of silicone on the end of the dowel.

Tim Douglass

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Reply to
Tim Douglass

effective. Thanks a bunch for the tip Tim.

Reply to
LP

Or maybe use the grommet under the dowel? Sounds like it could be a timesaver, I hope my freud bits match. Zeke com to net for e-mail

Reply to
Zeke

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