Router Table - Stage 3

Its always the supposedly easy bits that cause the most pain. I removed the base plate from the router so that I could use one of the attaching screws to source some screws appropriate for attaching the router to the insert plate. What I needed were some 4mm high-tensile countersunk head screws about 20mm long. My least favourite hardware store (Bunnings) was a waste of time. Yes they had 4mm screws but not CS heads and I couldn't verify the thread match because they only sell in blister packs. Our small local Mitre 10 had a closer match but still not CS heads. In desperation I went to a machinery shop (Hare & Forbes, North Parrammatta) which doesn't sell screws etc but were able to tell me where to get them - Lee Bros, Dunlop St, North Parrammatta. The guy at Lee Bros was very helpful considering I only needed 4 screws - a total sale of only $3.20.

Now with screws in hand I was able to continue with the work of attaching the router insert plate to the router. This firstly involved drilling holes in the insert plate for the screws. (The router table insert plates don't come with pre-drilled holes because there is a wide variety in placement over different makes and models of router.) I attached the router's own base plate to the insert plate with sticky tape and drilled through the holes and through the insert plate. I then took off the router base plate and countersunk the holes using the suitably angled point of a 1/2in bit. (Probably not as good as a real countersink bit but good enough.)

Attaching the router to the insert plate was then straightforward and I set up the router 'table' on top of the B&D Workmate to trial fit it. Here is a picture showing the almost final set up.


Because the base of the router is slightly wider than the maximum jaw opening of the Workmate, I had to raise the router table up a little to clear the opening and let the insert plate sit flush in its aperture in the table. This picture shows the temporary measure with a couple of pieces of 25mm MDF offcut between the router table and the Workmate top.


The next step, and probably the final one for now, will be to attach a couple of pieces of 50x50mm timber to the underside of the table top either side of the router insert to raise the table clear of the Workmate top. I'll also grab a piece of 100x50mm to clamp to the table top for use as a fence. Depending how this goes I may make an adjustable system with a couple of routed through grooves to put adjustment bolts through for the fence.

And lastly for now, if I never have to go to Bunnings again it will be too soon!

Router Table - Stage 2

After creating the inside aperture for the Router Insert Plate to sit in, the aperture needed to be rebated to a depth of about 6mm and width about 12.7mm. I did a couple of practice trenches across a piece of offcut MDF to make sure I had the depth setting correct.

To do the rebating I used a straight router bit slightly wider than the rebate width and then clamped a piece of straight stock onto the router table top to act as a guide for the router. Of course I had to move the guide four times to do all four sides of the aperture but that was simple enough - just a matter of measuring the offset correctly and clamping it in place.

This picture shows the router table top on top of the B&D Workmate with the aperture rebated.

And here (below) is a picture showing the Insert Plate in place and flush with the surface.


This is pretty much in what will be its final working position on the B&D Workmate.

The next stage will be drilling the Router Insert Plate so that the router, with its base-plate removed, can be mounted on it.

Woodworking (A digression)

Having got closer to the pointy end of my project I found that I have to use the router on the small pieces I am using to cap off the excess mortice holes. I need to round over the exposed edges to fit in with the rest of the work. It is pretty much impossible to use a hefty hand-held router to do this. Using a rasp doesn't give the same sort of edge without a lot of graft. Pretty obviously mounting the router upside down in a router table is the go but ... its a pretty expensive way to go if it won't be used that much. I had a look on Ebay and there are a number of Triton Workcentre combos up for auction but they were all going up past where I was willing to go for a second-hand deal.

I also looked at new Router Tables online, in particular the Carbatec basic model which is steel and goes for just $379. It would be nice but ... (Aside: Carbatec at Auburn and other places is a great place for man-toys of the woodworking variety. Be careful if you go in there because it would be very easy to spend way too much money.) While at Carbatec I also had a look at a Router Table insert plate. This a Phenolic plate which is designed to be let into a worktable surface with the router attached beneath it. At $55 it allows one to gerry-up their own router table using whatever is to hand. The basic requirement is some sort of suitable work surface that can be used for the purpose. Alas I didn't have such a thing as I've just been working on saw horses and an old seating bench. After deliberating over night I decided that my best plan would be:

1. Obtain a suitable work surface/platform.
2. Get the router table insert plate.
3. Make my own router table to be adequate for this job.

For 1 I have available a sheet of solid Melamine coated MDF from an old IKEA desk. Add to that a new Black and Decker Workmate and I have the surface and platform. As a bonus it can be easily taken down leaving the Workmate available as a more normal (wood) working platform.

I bought the insert plate and now what I have to do is put it together so that I can back to the real job - round over the edges on the small pieces.

First stage is to cut a suitably sized hole in the MDF to house the inner part of the insert plate. This picture shows the hole - achieved by drilling pilot holes with a 5/8in spade bit and then cutting down using a tenon saw (again - I wasn't going to buy a JigSaw for one job).

The router insert plate is sitting on the MDF at the left. The next picture shows the router insert plate sitting in the hole but standing above the table surface.

The next stage will be to route a rebate 10mm deep and 12.5 mm wide around the edge of the hole so that the plate will be seated flush with the table surface. And then we will be in business. The router will be suspended below the plate and between the jaws of the B&D Workmate. I'll probably put a couple of 50 x 50mm battens underneath the work surface to raise it up a bit and provide something for the B&D jaws to grip onto. I'll just clamp a suitable bit of timber (with recess for the router bit) along the surface for use as a fence. If needs be later I can always route a rebate for a mitre gauge and put more permanent adjustable fences on it too.

More when its up and running...

Woodworking without pain (3)

Well things have progressed a bit further - even if quite slowly (somewhat similar progress to Gibbs' boat in NCIS). The legs are cut to length and I now have the rough finishing of the legs and rails done. They have been smoothed and rough sanded. I also used a 10mm round-over bit in the router to do the sides and bottoms of the legs, and a smaller one to do the lower edges of the rails. This picture shows the test assembled framework right-side up for the first time.


Don't worry about the legs appearing a bit off skew in the picture as its only held together by the friction in the mortice and tenon joints at this stage - they will be straight when glued and doweled.

The picture also clearly shows the empty outer mortices resulting from my design change. Currently I am making some short stub rails to make it look as though the rails do go all the way through. I have currently made 3 - the 4th's tenon is done and it just needs to be cut from the stock - which will leave 4 more to do. Then they will all need rough-finishing, rounding over etc before I do the permanent assembly.

Woodworking without pain (2)

Well since getting through the routed mortices in the last post I've been slowly cutting the rails to length and cutting each tenon to fit one, and only one mortice.

I had originally intended to have each pair of rails attached to a leg go right through the leg and cut a halved notch out of each where they cross inside the leg and I cut the mortices on four sides of the legs with that in mind. After cutting the first pair of tenons and unit testing (trial fitting) I came to the conclusion that this provided a weak point on the end of the tenons so I gave up on that idea and just cut the tenons back to go 2/3 of the way through the mortice in the leg. The bad news about that is that leaves the outer ends of the mortices as holes but what I intend to do with those is to cut short stubs from the end of some spare rail timber and glue them in place to look like the tenons come right through - oh the devious cunning of it.

Anyway, I have now completed all of the mortices and their matching tenons so the time came for an integration test.

This shot shows the rails laid out together as they will
be fitted to the legs.

The two longer rails each have one slightly longer tenon as a differentiator for identification. (Bullsh*t - I indavertently cut one too long so I cut the other one to match ;-)

This shows the junction between an end rail (left) and a front/back rail.

The cutback (on top in the photo but will be on the bottom) is to provide an overlap with the bottom of the mortice so that I didn't have to be finicky about making them too pretty.

With the rails laid out I was able to carefully fit the morticed legs over them to show its final assembled form - albeit upside down.

The final assembled form of the legs and rails.

The show above makes the base look more square than it really is. The final finished surface will be about 1200 x 900mm. Note that the legs are not yet cut to length - thats the next job. The leg height has to be such that our cast iron outdoor chairs can fit underneath the rails so that will make the table surface about 720mm or thereabouts.

One final challenge I am expecting will be whether the table is actually stable enough with the rails fitted at the top of the legs. Unfortunately I won't know this until it is all glued and pegged. However, if needs be I can fit some strengthening blocks in the corners between the bottom of each rail and the leg it is attached to (and even across the inside of the corner from one rail to another) but I don't want to do that unless I have to. I don't anticipate that the table will be moved very often - it will probably require a team of circus strongmen.

Woodworking without pain (1)

I started a project to build a new outside table based on some laminated Yellow Box kitchen benchtops rescued from my mate Jase's kitchen renovation. Of course the table tob is useless without the infrastructure to support it so I went out and bought some 100 x 100 mm Black Butt (lovely wood and hard as b*****y) for the legs and some 100 x 50mm Black Butt for the rails. That was the easy bit - now I have to construct the thing!

The first thing I had to do was 'dress' the timber as it was rough-sawn. Fortunately I have a Towa electric plane and that made the job a bit easier although incredibly noisy and produced huge quantities of small wood shavings and dust. The garden is getting the benefit of those.

I had decided to place the horizontal rails at the top of the legs - each corner being a cross-over, halved mortice and tenon from two directions. This would give me the strength I needed and also allow the horizontal rails to be at such a height as to allow our outdoor chairs to be slid underneath. The first task was (is - it isn't finished yet) to cut out the mortices for the ends of the rails to lock into. Every good job starts with marking out so that one follows the principle of measure/mark twice (or more) and cut once. So here is a pic of one of the legs with the mortices marked out ready to be cut.

(Double-click to view larger)

As you can see this is my 'workshop' - two saw-horses outside the back of the garage. I had first of all thought to cut them by hand using a tenon saw for the long vertical cuts from the top of the legs and then chisel to remove the bits between the saw cuts. It could be done but would take several months of Sundays so I stopped and gave it some thought as to how to do it easier. The first thing that I tried was making multiple holes drilled by a spade bit in a drill press and then chiselling out the dross. This worked but was again quite slow. This pic shows the result of that effort - still have to do final chisel adjustments made at this stage.

(Double-click to enlarge)

The long cuts could easily made on a bandsaw but would require one with a deep enough throat to allow 100 mm timber to pass. That would be an expensive (but oh so nice) addition to the workshop. Then I though about using a router and, knowing that Jase has a router, I thought that I would give that a go. So - I contacted Jase and asked to borrow his router to test the theory. Since I hadn't used a router before it took a little getting used to and time to set up etc. Anyway, having proved the process on my second attempt I decided to get my own router.
I can use the router on other projects and there will be a lot of edge rounding still to do on this project after the structural work is done.

I had to buy a longer bit to take out the middle portion of the dross but I have now sorted out the process and can get through it relatively quickly with minimal stops for adjustment. I was initially taking advice I had read online and elsewhere - make all cuts at one depth before going deeper. That is probably OK for some projects but not for this one. Adjusting the parallel fence is what takes the time - particularly as my new router has a quick step-progression depth gauge adjuster - so I make all the cuts necessary to reach the required depth in one location before adjusting the fence to make the next parallel series of cuts. This picture shows one cut already down to the required depth.



Note my 'backstop' to stop the router at the end of the desired cut length. Also note the 100 x 50mm rails clamped to the sides of the leg to provide support for the router past the end of the legs.

And here is a pic with the next cut made about halfway down to the required depth.


This is one of the legs with cuts made from two sides to the full depth of the shorter bit.


Once all of the cuts have been made on all four sides it will be time to mount the longer bit and take out the middle section. After that the joints can be cleaned up by chisel and then they will be ready to measure individually for the tenons on each of the rails.


Question: Why not use the longer router bit to make all of the cuts?
Answer: Because the longer bit protrudes from the bottom of the router in the fully 'up' position and the initial cut depth would be too much. The general guide for depth of cut seems to be about 3.2mm per step.

One more thing. There was a potential to make a mess of this and have to start again so I have not yet cut the legs to their final finished length. There is enough to spare on each leg to do the whole thing over again if necessary.

Next episode: Finishing the mortices, cutting the tenons, and putting the infrastructure together.

National Pass

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

The day turned out fine and mild for the walk we had been planning for a couple of months. Not that the walk itself needed much planning - just that it took a while to get to a date which was mutually agreeable for Dominic, Elgan, John and me.

After looking at a few walk options we had settled on the National Pass walk in the NSW Blue Mountains as being of sufficient interest to us all without being over long - although still graded as 'hard' due to the amount of descent/ascent in a relatively short distance. The walk has been well documented by others such as this which has a detailed PDF available (National Pass) so I won't describe it in great detail.

We had arranged to meet at the Valley of the Waters Reserve car park for a 9:30am start. Leaving Epping at around 7:30am got Dominic and I there at around 9:00am with Elgan arriving just as we were donning our boots. While it was nice and sunny there was a definite hint of autumn in the air as we waited for John.

We set off at about 9:30am as planned and had elected to take the clockwise direction which, we were informed, was the easier direction to walk in. Of course, being a circular walk there is the same amount of descent and ascent (different track notes give different amounts between 500 and 700 metres) but what does vary is the steepness and concentration of said ascent/descent.

The most popular clockwise track seems to be the overcliff/undercliff track which turns off the Empress Falls track not far from Conservation Hut. It isn't long before the promised views are being experienced over the valleys from the track which follows the cliff edge fairly closely. A short distance along we disturbed a group of Yellow-tailed Balck Cockatoos as they were feeding in one of the many Banksias along the cliff top. Also present and easily identifiable were Yellow Wattle Birds. I've seen both of these species occassionally in the urban landscape but they tend to be infrequent visitors - especially the Black Cockatoos.

This neing a not very long walk, it wasn't too long before we were able to get a view of the cliffs just past Wentworth Falls which is about the half-way point on the trek.

View of the cliff at Wentworth Falls showing the
track down to the crossing below the upper falls

This photo (click to enlarge) shows the cliff-face on the South-Eastern side of Wentworth Falls. About halfway down the photograph - roughly level with the top of the eucalypt at the left hand forefront - the track can be seen, and lower down to the right there is a white sign at the top of another set of steep steps. The sign warns not to go along the old section of pathway leading to the left (penalty $500) which was only protected with chicken mesh held up on wire strung between start pickets. The path as it now exists is well protected and it would take a great act of stupidity to put oneself in any real danger of falling.

A little further on we were able to look back and down from a lookout on the edge of the cliff. This gave us the opportunity to see the path where we would be walking on the return leg of the trek.

In the photo below (a bit washed out because I'd forgotten to switch to landscape mode :-[) the track is visbile about half-way down as it wends around the cliff face and disappears back around the corner.

Looking back at the actual National Pass
track along the cliff face

Leaving the lookout behind we were soon at the approach to Wentworth Falls. A small cascade at the top, above the main falls, is worth a look.

Cascade on Wentworth Falls creek

I had thought that there might have ben more water after recent rain but John assured us that there is often a lot less than we experienced.

Crossing over the top of the falls the track goes around the opposite cliff (first picture above) and then heads down in a series of steep stone stairways before crossing below the upper falls at the start of the actual National Pass track.

Looking back up at Wentworth Falls from
the crossing point

After a short uphill stretch the National Pass track levels outand is quite easy walking back along the side of the cliff towards the starting point. Nearing the end of the cliff the path descends via stairways again to just below Empress Falls. A short uphill brings us to the bottom of Empress Falls which, while not as big as Wentworth Falls, is just as pleasant a spectacle. It would be even more welcome on a hot summer's day.

Empress Falls

After the Empress Falls there is a procession of stairways and track leading back up to the Conservation Hut. It is quite steep ad hard going but there are plenty of opportunities to rest and catch the breath. This section of the track was actually quite busy as many people seem to come down to look at Empress Falls and then go back up to the cafe at the top.

We arrived back after just under three hours. We had taken it quite gently and stopped many times to admire the views and take the odd photograph (memo to self - use landscape mode instead of portrait mode for this sort of photo!).

Reaching the top it was a good time to have a snack and a good chat before heading back home.

A wordle of this blog

Here is a 'Wordle' (word cloud) of the blog up to now - see http://www.wordle.net/

Click to see full-size image