Routers Beyond Roundovers | I Can Do That!

[Music] [Applause] I'm Andrew with Popular Woodworking today and I can do that I'm gonna show you how to use your router for stuff beyond making round overs and edge profiles we'll show you how to do some router joinery we will be making some day dough's with a simple dado jig I'll be showing you how to do rabbits and then finally we'll be cutting some circles and arches I'm gonna reset stay tuned so the first thing we need to do is change out our our round over a bit and put in a straight bit for cutting hard our dedos you can see here that the round over bit has a bearing on the top and a slight curve the straight bit that we're using for this is just you can see a straight edge there that'll give us a nice groove for our data so before we start changing the bit though we want to make sure we unplug the router changing router bits is one of the things I hate to do that never seems to go right but we'll give it a shot here so this router has a collet that you use a wrench on and then a lock here to lock the bit in place as you're loosening it once the collet Sluis the bit pops out and we can put our other bit in now you don't want to shove the bit all the way into the bottom and you also want to be careful cuz the ears are sharp what I like to do is go all the way to the bottom and then bring it out just a hair and that so as the router stuff starts to spin the bit doesn't vibrate out of the collet go ahead and tighten that up just need a little bit of tightening on there plenty and we'll throw the base back on so once we have our stray pet installed we're gonna put on our edge guide now a lot of routers will come with an edge guide they look like this you can notice we've got a gap here in between where the guide rides on your board and once you get to the end they can turn and move on yet which you don't want so we're just gonna install a little auxilary fence just a piece of hardwood held on with a couple screws here up make sure it's in the right spot and now you can see as it rides along the edge of your board there's no tipping hmm then to install the guy that just slides on the side of the router here and it's held in place with a wingnut there we go double check that our depth is right on the dado the board is three-quarters of an inch and you the general rule of thumb is you never want to go more than half that so we'll go about 3/8 of an inch on the bit deep that's maybe Oh that's pretty much right on there the next thing we want to do is lay out where we want our dado to be just set that up here trusty square mark to find the other side here we've got our dado laid out then we'll want to double-check where we're routing here the guide over this is the the trickiest part of using a guide like this is setting up your cut looks like it's pretty good all right now we'll clamp our board down we're actually going to route this dado in two passes because the bed itself isn't a full 3/4 inch wide put on our safety glasses ear protection make sure the router is plugged back in after we're done handling it and then we'll set up and route our first data [Music] so you can see it cut a nice solid groove and we just need to nibble off that other end there set up our cuts and route the other pass [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] check our fit it's a little bit loose a little bit sloppy but thankfully that jig we're going to be building next we'll take care of all that so we'll reset and start working on the jig so our router dado jig is really pretty simple it has four parts you've got two bottom pieces and then two fences so you set this up so you've got a ninety degree angle here and a ninety degree angle here and this is a fixed fence then you'll have a fence that moves back and forth so you can do different widths of dedos the first thing we need to do though is to cut some slots in your bottom pieces and to do that we'll use a quarter inch spiral bit in our router that'll give us a slot just size for these quarter inch carriage bolts and star knobs so we're going to be cutting slots through the board's we don't want to do that all in one pass so we'll do a couple passes to get us there we'll also use the same router with the same fence on it it's not it doesn't need to be precisely in the center so I've got the defence so the bid is roughly centered and we'll set up for our first cut here bring that up a little bit so we're cutting about just just over just shy of halfway through the board there like so then we'll also want to set up our start and stop points mark out where our slot is going to be there so to do the cut because we're not starting at the end of the board we're going to be plunging into the center of the board you can see that we just have the fixed base on our router so to do the plunge the way I like to do it is start with half with the bass rest half of the bass resting on your board and you'll swing into the plunge so we're going to plunge in not at our line but in a little bit wave a little bit go back to our line and route all the way through [Music] then we just need to adjust our bit a little bit deeper to cut all the way through you can see I've got a waste board under here too so I don't cut into the top of the workbench let's just make sure that's deep enough to cut through it's maybe even a little bit too deep yeah it'll be good and then we just do that same plunge motion again here [Music] now that we have one cut we'll use that to layout the second board layout the second hole here get in there with an O because my pencil won't fit don't have to be super precise because the you'll see how the jig works here in a second go ahead and throw some lines on and then we can set up for our cut again [Music] we'll just the bit for the through cuts there we've got our two slots cut so to assemble the jig we want to make sure our fence on this side is precisely 90 degrees both here and here the easiest way to do that is line up our boards roughly throw one screw and I pre-drilled this top piece of plywood here and then we can come in with our square make sure everything's nice and squared up here say that looks pretty good come back in throw another screw in double-check that we're so square looks good throw that final screw in and then we'll do the same thing on this side okay so now you can see we've got a nice straight fence with the right angle here and then this fence will slide on these slots to open and close here and to do that we just need to make a couple holes so we'll flip this over and throw a couple of points in here for our holes we want to make sure they're roughly in the center of the board there do that here then all I need to do is drill through the board there so then we just need to assemble the jig we've added washers to our carriage bolts to help them slide in the slots a little bit more cleanly pop those under there and then we can throw our sliding fence on tighten it in so the thing that makes this jig all work is using a straight bit with bearing on top you can see the other bit we other straight bid we use to cut our previous dedos doesn't have a bearing so it doesn't have anything right against so the bearing will ride against both sides of the fences here in our slot and because the fence is adjustable we can make this dado any width we want so I'll set that up and we'll cut some dedos so we've got our board we're cutting under here and you can use this width here to determine the width of your dado it's really simple you just throw your piece of stock in there snug it up tighten these down pull that out and then clamp this in place and you can route your dado one thing you also want to do is make sure they're bit depth is set to the right setting so you can come in here and you can see right in there that we're cutting about a quarter of an inch into the piece of plywood and so we're gonna do this in two passes we'll go up along this fence and come back along this fence here we go [Music] [Music] moment of truth nice and tight now let's talk about rabbiting with a router so rabbiting with the router means you're using a rabbeting bit you can see here that a rabbeting bit has a bearing on the bottom and then an offset cutter most rabbeting bit sets come with different sized bearings so you can have different size offsets this one is set to about 3/16 of an inch so you can see as it rides along the board it's gonna cut 3/16 inches off as it rides along now you're gonna ask yourself where am I going to use rabbits most often I use rabbits in the back of cabinets to fit in a backer board or I'll sometimes use them in the bottom of drawers that aren't gonna see a ton of use so I'm going to throw this on the router cut a rabbit and show you how it all works [Music] so there you can see we created this nice lip around the edges you can tell that also a left rounded corner so we'll clean those up with the chisel and fit in the back just take our trusty chisel here and square up the corners I like to sort of use hand pressure to make my nice square corner and a little tap then we just take our back piece that's cut to size it in you've got your nice little rabbited back cabinet I just like to take a minute to thank our sponsors for this video wood craft and Titebond everything you'd need to do these router projects and any other woodworking projects is available at your local wood craft store or online including routers router bits hardware router jigs plywood hardwood anything you need for woodworking is at your local wood craft store and well you can order online if you've got one in your area make sure to head on down to the store and chat with their sales employees they know probably more about woodworking than I do and they're a great resource and when it comes time to glue your project together make sure to check out tight bond they've got a glue for every application now back to the show so cutting circles and arches with your router is actually pretty straightforward I'll show you how to use this simple inexpensive compass guide basically you've got your Center Point and your cutter as your cutter cuts through you can see it it cuts a nice circular arc so I'll mount the router on that and show you how that works so we've got our router mounted in our compass jig and as you can see here we've got our point and our cutter now if you're routing a circle you want to measure your radius to the outside of the cutter but as for your outing an arc like we are you want to measure to the inside of the cutter and we've got our cutter set for nine and a half inches so that'll give us a nine and a half inch arc from the center put on our safety gear and we'll start routing here now the other thing to keep in mind is we're using a plunge router and we're gonna do this in multiple passes and that's because we don't want to put too much torque on the bit and on the jig as we're routing so we'll do this in two passes here so we'll set the depth to just about half make sure that's all lined up there we are routing MDF it's gonna get really dusty wearing a mask is also a great idea here we go [Music] and we'll come back around and we'll route all the way through this time [Music] so there you've got your nice arc if you aren't interested in buying one of these jigs they're also really easy to make so we're gonna make one to cut a circle so to build our super simple circle jig say that three times fast all you need is a piece of sheet goods I'm using half-inch MDF here you could use quarter-inch plywood this is just sort of what I had around 3/4 inch plywood gets a little thick I'm you're gonna lose some depth on your bit so try to use 1/2 inch or or quarter inch you just want something that's nice and firm and solid and then the other thing you need beyond your piece of wood is a finishing nail and that's going to be the center of your radius really the hardest part about building this jig is mounting your router so we'll go do that next mounting your router on on this piece of wood may seem a little bit overwhelming if you're thinking about lining up all these holes easiest way to do it scribe your base off your router and use that to mark out where your holes are going to be I'm just going to come in here and Mark out where my holes are back up here and then I'm just gonna drill these out now I'm also gonna throw a countersink on the bottom so these screws don't get in the way as it's moving around the board I'm just gonna flip this over and drill from the other side to clean up the back here all right then we just mount our router to our jig so lending up this first hole is probably one of the harder parts of putting this jig together I think I got a line up there once you have one end the rest of them should fall right in line good now we're using a plunge router for this procedure too it's just a lot easier to use because we want to cut thick pieces and multiple passes and once you've got it on your jig you're gonna use it quite a bit so now that we have our router mounted there we're going to do our initial plunge through the jig [Music] so now we have our jig basically zeroed out and we also can now figure out our radius so if I want to make a 10-inch circle I need my the center of my circle at five inches like so and because I do want to make a 10 inch circle going to mark out 5 inches going from the end of the bit because it's going to cut the whole width there and then we just get to drive our finish nail through the board so the smart way to do this is to tap it through the bottom and then bring it back through the top then flip it over find our hole they're just going to double-check my radius it's pretty good and then I'm gonna need to find the center of my board here seventeen and a half half of that is eight and three quarters good and then I'm going to drill a pilot hole for my radius drop into there we go now all we get to do is route we'll take it in two passes make sure to clamp everything down here now because we don't want to cut into the top of our bench I've got a another piece of half-inch MDF under the board I'm cutting as a sacrificial board because we will cut all the way through the other thing you want to keep in mind when you're securing your workpiece is that your jig doesn't hit your clamps at all I've run into that after I haven't thought about it thoroughly so do that throw in our safety gear and we'll do our first plunge go all the way around and then plunge all the way through and cut a second time [Music] now if everything went correctly should have a personal circle in the center of this board there's your perfect circle so I build some speaker cabinets and I actually keep a couple of jigs set up specifically for 10 inch and 12 inch speakers I find it's really handy it's an expensive one of my favorite things to do with the router stay tuned for more I can do that and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Popular Woodworking

Views: 823,353

Rating: 4.6757507 out of 5

Keywords: Popular, Woodworking

Id: 4WkIyAF1eyM

Length: 31min 2sec (1862 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018