On Making Curved Brackets
Having made about 32 of these brackets previously, cutting each with the jigsaw and sanding each to a smoothish, but not identical, curve, I felt a new technique was called for. I had not previously used the router for cutting pieces to a template, so this was a new experience and required extra care.
I ordered the 1/2" Freud trim/profile bit from Amazon and spent a couple of days wondering how much I wanted to lose some flesh to this nasty thing, which must run fully unguarded on the router table. The template jig is shown to the left.
I made the template jig so that I could fasten the actual work piece to it with minimum fuss and guide the work piece safely by the extended 'handles', thus keeping all bodily components well away from the router bit.
I incorporated a fence across the template jig to allow easy and accurate placement of the rough-cut workpiece. After the first cut, it was evident that just using two sided tape did not adequately fasten workpiece to the template jig. This was discovered without damage to workpiece, template jig and operator. Subsequently, I used two small brass nails to pins the workpiece from underneath the jig and this worked very well.
The other lesson learned, with only minor damage to the start of one cut, was that the collar underneath the bearing must bet set right against the top of the router's collet. I had left a space of about 3/16" initially between top of collet and bottom of collar. For unknown reasons the collar slipped down, allowing the bearing to slip down beneath the template and cut too deeply. After an irritating amount of fiddling with the collar, trying with the smallest Allen key I have to fasten it firmly to the shank, I was back in business.
With minimum effort, I produced the required sixteen copies of the corner brackets, each uncannily identical. This, of course, was the whole objective...
I ordered the 1/2" Freud trim/profile bit from Amazon and spent a couple of days wondering how much I wanted to lose some flesh to this nasty thing, which must run fully unguarded on the router table. The template jig is shown to the left.
I made the template jig so that I could fasten the actual work piece to it with minimum fuss and guide the work piece safely by the extended 'handles', thus keeping all bodily components well away from the router bit.
I incorporated a fence across the template jig to allow easy and accurate placement of the rough-cut workpiece. After the first cut, it was evident that just using two sided tape did not adequately fasten workpiece to the template jig. This was discovered without damage to workpiece, template jig and operator. Subsequently, I used two small brass nails to pins the workpiece from underneath the jig and this worked very well.
The other lesson learned, with only minor damage to the start of one cut, was that the collar underneath the bearing must bet set right against the top of the router's collet. I had left a space of about 3/16" initially between top of collet and bottom of collar. For unknown reasons the collar slipped down, allowing the bearing to slip down beneath the template and cut too deeply. After an irritating amount of fiddling with the collar, trying with the smallest Allen key I have to fasten it firmly to the shank, I was back in business.
With minimum effort, I produced the required sixteen copies of the corner brackets, each uncannily identical. This, of course, was the whole objective...
