Router – Woodworking Miscellany

Novice Wood-Ruiner Studies the Door Build

Figure 1: A Door in the clamps (Big iron Besse ones!)

So … the doors are going together – but I’m doing the bottom ones first (using the birch panel inserts instead of the glass inserts that will go into the top cabinet panels). Before I could get to the glue-up shown in figure 1, I ran the frame parts over the table saw (to cut them to length and to put the panel dado grooves into the edges of them), and then I ran the frame parts over the router (to put the biscuit mortises (grooves) into the ends of them. I had previously used the router to put an ogee style inner profile on all of the frame parts.

Glass Case Project – Magic Router Bits

Figure 1: Roman Ogee router bit makes a good profile on the door frame

So, for a novice wood ruiner, my books tell me I’ve made some correct guesses about how to build doors. The selection of the Roman Ogee router bit to make my own door frame stock was a good idea. It halves the cost of the frames, and I can say it’s unique to the project (because the depth-of-cut personalizes the profile a little bit (many slightly different profiles possible).

The Closet Project

Figure 1: The original closet was pretty boring and dark.

So, one of the first projects I used as a test vehicle for the newly built homemade router was the “closet project.” You can see that the original closet was pretty plain and dark. The carpet had seen better days, and was a dust magnet. So, we designed into the new closet a new look with the new wood floor and the shelves and the hi/lo clothes rods (to hang more clothes). The result is in figure 2:

Figure 2 : The “after” photo for the closet project. Much less boring.

The middle picture seems caddywumpus, but that is mostly an optical illusion. The new homemade router was used mostly to smooth some of the trim pieces, which had been rough-cut with a circular hand saw. I had not yet received the Delta table saw, so the hand saw put some woodworking bloopers into a few places (not going to say what they are LOL).

The Eighty Five dollar Router Table

Figure 1: The author’s $85 router table (not quite finished in photo).

So, router tables are pretty pricey, if you’re looking for a good one. They’re upwards of $500-600 for a good one that is of the steel frame and legs variety. So, I spent a few spare weekends digging around in places like Habitat for Humanity’s Restore outlets and other such places like that. I found a discarded motor stand for $15. These are often used to hold grinding wheel motors.