MVI_6197.AVI

This is the inaugural run of my new router flattening system. I've seen them in use in wood projects online, especially for flattening large glue-ups, such as those for tabletops, and I've long wanted one. The 132-piece maple/walnut heart cutting board I made for my mom for Christmas was the tipping point. I needed to plane the pieces flat after the glue-up, and with my planer broken, and my 6" jointer too small for either direction, this was the only option.

The rails and router bed are made of red oak held together with drywall screws. There's no glue used. I'll have to make up some more router rails for various part thicknesses, as there's very little vertical travel in this router, and a lot is used up just getting the bit below the 3/4" oak base of the bed. The rails about 28" long, and the bed is a full 3'. This is also the first time in well over a year that this workbench has been free of piles of crap across its entire length. It was nice to see it again. I used paper as shims to get both rails level along their lengths and with each other, which was a little bit time-consuming, especially with needing to check *after* clamping, undoing the clamps each time to shim again.

I really wish I had a one of those conveyor drum sander things. I could flatten one side with this, use that to get the other side in parallel without fear of massive tearout on these end grain glue-ups, and then flip again to clean up the tool marks from the router here. Some day...

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  Howto & Style

[bob pigkiller]

go down to walmart , they have this shelf liner its some sort of foam it comes in rolls . when you put it down on a clean surface and put your workpiece on it it will not move from side to side but your workpiece will lift right off of it

[gfixler]

- I use that stuff for some things, but as there's no direct coupling in this jig between the rails/router and the workpiece, there really needs to be a solid surface to keep them registered with each other. This is a flattening operation. The piece would rock up and down on the sponge mat by some fraction of its ~1/8" thickness, especially when hitting the edges, creating a slightly rounded top surface. This would make things like running it through my drum sander not work well.

[gfixler]

The bit is a very cheap 1/8" flat end cutter (1 cutting knife down one side of a very thin cylinder) with a 1/4" shaft in the router collet. It's from a cheap set of Ryobi bits that came in a little wall case. Nothing special at all. For work later on a much heavier slab (1" thick cross section of a 13" dia. modesto ash stump), I moved up to something like a 3/8" flat bit. The heavier, the larger the bit I can use without having to hold the piece down at all. Note: light passes, w/ a face guard.

[egastap]

Easy to fix the movement issue. Fasten down both side rails with clamps (notice you only had the fronts clamped). Make some thin wedges and place on both sides of the workpiece. Voila, it will be stable.

[Lars Mith]

What size / style of router bit did you use ? What speed did you have the router set to ?