Brendon_t Posted May 14, 2016 Report Share Posted May 14, 2016 Pulling back and regrouping sounds smart. Are you routing the dog hole with the 1/4" bit? Sounds like a lot of stress and heat for that size bit. Glad you caught it on scrap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbot Posted May 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2016 No, I noticed that the depth of guide bushings that fit my 1/2" shank straight bits were about 1/16" deeper than the 1/2" plywood I used to make the template. So, I used a shorter templating bit (Whiteside 3000) to remove about 1/4", then I could hog out the bulk with my guide bushing and larger router/router bit, and then finish up with the 1" long templating bit suggested in the Guild build. The process worked fine the first time, but obviously I built the dog hole template wrong. With the correct dog hole template, I did one more trial run, but this time the bearing on the short templating bit must have jammed/seized because I was getting terrible burning. As soon as I saw the problem, I stopped and sure enough, the bearing was no longer spinning freely. To make matters worse, it was jammed in the collet. I was eventually able to get the collet out, but I think it's toast. I then bought a 1/2" shank templating bit from Home Depot (Diable DR16520), but as soon as I got it home I noticed one of the flutes was chipped. At that point, I was done. When I get back to it, I'll make the template out of 3/4" plywood and do it exactly like Marc did in the video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhighlander Posted May 14, 2016 Report Share Posted May 14, 2016 Not to hijack, but I often wondered why router guide bushings are different lengths, as mentioned above. Anyone know for sure? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbot Posted May 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2016 I wondered this myself. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing it offers more guiding surface for larger diameter bits that also tend to be longer in length? But I would think then there would be large diameter bearings in shorter lengths, and I've never seen them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nerdbot Posted August 9, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Long overdue for an update. I got sidelined for a few weeks because after the long Memorial Day weekend of working in the shop, I got sloppy with a chisel, slipped, and gouged two fingers on my left hand pretty good - 9 stitches total. We have 3 urgent cares relatively close to our house, but I guess stitches on a holiday technically qualifies as "emergent" as none of the urgent cares were open. Luckily no permanent nerve damage or loss of mobility/movement. The 2-3 weeks to heal overlapped our first vacation in early June, which I took as a blessing since I'd be away from the shop anyway. When we got back from vacation, Arizona monsoon season started, so it's been pretty hot in general (roughly 100-105 degrees in my garage). Before long, we were off for our second vacation (just this past week). We don't have any more trips planned for awhile, so hopefully the heat will break soon and I can get this project finished! Glue up of the legs: Completed both end caps for the front and rear slab, as well as the condor tails. I was pretty pleased with the result. From most angles they look perfect, but up close inspection shows some slight gaps that I can live with. I next made the dogs. I read a blog article from the Schwarz where he mentioned using self-stick cork liner instead of leather on his bench. Since I had some already, I decided to give that a try. It was really easy to apply. We'll see how well it lasts. Not really sure what to expect - I wouldn't be surprised if the Arizona heat causes the self-adhesive to fail sooner than usual. I took a small break from the roubo to jig up a more semi-permanent drill press table, since there's a lot of drilling for the legs. I had routed 2+" deep mortises on a previous project. It was my first time creating mortises, and they were very ugly, inconsistent, had a lot of tear out, and required a lot of tweaking of each tenon to get good fits. So, this time around, I tried hogging out most of the material for the mortises on the drill press, then do clean up passes with the router to get right up to the line. The mortises definitely came out cleaner: I learned that the best results came when I started the clean up pass first with my shorter down spiral bit, route as deep as it would go, then switch to my longer up spiral bit and route to the final 2" depth. I have to switch bits because even when bottomed out in the router collet, my up spiral bit (Whiteside RU5200) sticks out past the bottom of the router base (DW618), so I can't really start the cut safely with that bit. As somewhat expected, the up spiral bit tended to cause a lot of tear out at the top of the mortise, but I'm not sure if it was a "usual/expected" amount of tearout, or if perhaps I need to get it resharpened and then it would perform better. It's entirely possible I pushed the bit too hard on my previous project. While annoying and time consuming, if I took my time with the setup, using both down and up spiral bits worked really well so I can't complain too much. Though, it did make me look to see what routers have greater than 2.5" plunge depth. As far as I can tell, there's only 2 routers with significantly more plunge depth - the Porter Cable 7539 (3" depth) and the Festool 2200 (~3.125"). Not sure the Porter Cable is really worth the investment at this point (the Festool is definitely out for the near future) since I finally have a method that works well and I'm not sure how likely/often I will be routing mortises this deep again. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Coming along nicely! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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