Deep router fence

[opps]

Today I was trying to thrupenny bit a profile on the end of a replacement timber window sill. The front face is 50mm tall. I was working from the underside of the sill with a fluted bit.



Apologies for the rubbish drawing.

I soon noticed that the fence for my Dewalt 625EK router isn't quite deep enough. After routing down by about 30mm. the fence would no longer have a proper face to run against. Can you get deeper shoes/plates for them?

I did consider running the fence on the other side of the sill- but the bars are too short.

I then decided to switch over to a thinner fluted bit but it was too short. Someone had recently given me a router extension but that made it too long.

I toyed with the idea of using my biscuit cutter bit in the extension bit, unit I noticed that the collet was a half inch where as the biscuit cutter bit is a quarter of an inch. The collet in the extension bit is much shorter than the quarter inch collet provided with the router. I was not confident that swapping collets was either possible or safe.

In the end I flipped the sill over and used a door intumescent seal bit to fudge the last part over the under side of the round curve.

Looks like I will have more hand sanding than I hoped for...

As you can tell, my routing experience is limited.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I soon noticed that the fence for my Dewalt 625EK router isn't quite deep enough. After routing down by about 30mm. the fence would no longer have a proper face to run against. Can you get deeper shoes/plates for them?

Yes, in short a joiners answer (i.e. mine ) would be: Remove the plastic fence plates and add your own plates made from plywood, hardwood, Tufnol, UHMW plastic, etc....

I did consider running the fence on the other side of the sill- but the bars are too short

The fence rods on deWalt DW624/DW625/DWE625/Trend T10/T11/T12/T14/Elu MOF177 are all 10mm diameter (and the fences are interchangeable between all these models) - get some ground silver steel bar off eBay or from a local metal warehouse (mail order up to 1m - local supplier probably up to 2m). BTW the deWalt DW613/DW615/DW621/DW622/Trend T5/Elu MOF69/MOF96/OF97/Makita RP1110 fence rods are all 8mm diameter (and the fences are interchangeable between all these models as well as a number of other routers includingh some by Virutex, Perles and at least one older AEG model - the OF50)

I then decided to switch over to a thinner fluted bit but it was too short. Someone had recently given me a router extension but that made it too long.

It isn't particularly safe to use a collet extender freehand, so maybe not a bad idea to skip that

I toyed with the idea of using my biscuit cutter bit in the extension bit, unit I noticed that the collet was a half inch where as the biscuit cutter bit is a quarter of an inch. The collet in the extension bit is much shorter than the quarter inch collet provided with the router. I was not confident that swapping collets was either possible or safe.

Probably a different collet design, so not safe, I agree. Collets really aren't "universal"

You probably already think I'm a smarmy git for saying that, so I'll now tell you how I tackle these sorts of jobs:-

(i) You need to set-up a sticking board to hold your material firmly and provide enough support surface for the base of a router whilst making the cuts (more about this later)

(ii) Make a physical template on a piece of cardboard (used cornflake packets are ideal!) and mark the profile on the ends of the timbers being profiled:

Also make up a counter profile (mirror image) template. This will be used later on to check against the completed profile. Note that this isn't meant to be any profile in particular, just one which is something like your sketch above so i can demonstrate the principles (so my crummy SketchUp version... )

(iii) Work the round-over at the top first with a round-over cutter:

(iii) Then turn the piece over and fix it between several scrap pieces of the same height - these will form your sticking board (highlighted in pink). Now work the big rebate at the bottom - several passes with a decent deep fence and a straight cutter will suffice (try getting a big straight cutter, something like a 20mm diameter if you intend to do a lot of these as it is (a) faster and (b) smoother because it takes less passes):

(iv) Rough out the bottom of the cove (underside) cut with the straight cutter to somewhere near by making multiple close passes:

If the router base isn't fully supported you may need to make-up an elongated sub-base which replaced the standard sub-base, to support the router on the sticking board (see next post for details - I've run out of photos on this one)

(v) Smooth the bottom (radiused/coved/convex) face of the material. I generally use a narrow shoulder plane to start with, but TBH a piece of large diameter dowel (e.g a piece of broom handle) with some P40 grit sandpaper wrapped around it cuts quite fast as well. Different radii can be created from 12mm and 18mm MDF by hand planing ("thrupenny bits" again) then sanding an edge to a radiused with very course grit sandpaper to the required radius, and then wrapping bits of sandpaper around the resulting sanding board. You can get the same result using offcuts of commercial dowel rod, quadrant beading, etc. The counter profile template (cardboard) is run along the moulding from time to time to check progress and gauge where you are. Outside curves (convex/bull nose/beaded) are best worked using a shoulder plane or small block plane to get the "thrupenny bit" profile quite near:

which is then hand sanded the get the finished profile:

As before, use a course grit to get yourself near to the required profile then work up through the grits to take the scratches out (i.e. P40 - P60 - P80 - P120, etc)

OK, so being an old hand I'd maybe have used a more traditional way for part of the time by using a half set of rounds and hollow planes (18 planes in total) to form hollowed and radiused edges and maybe side bead planes to make the bull nose sections:

Above: (Left) a boxed side beading plane, (right) two "pairs" of rounds and hollows. The biggest generally available planes cut a radius of 1-1/2 to 1-3/4in. Note - no metric, these are Imperial only

but the sticking board still gets used and I still rough away a lot of the waste using a router, straight cutter and fence or just a rebate plane before the moulding planes go anywhere near the work (they take so long to resharpen that you always try do the maximum amount of work with rebate planes or badger planes, and the bare minimum of work with moulding planes - AFAIK this was always the case).

For anyone interested moulding planes are the traditional approach, but do bear in mind if you want to buy some of these, that the majority most of them will be more than 100 years old and they have probably not been well looked after or properly stored since maybe WWII or even earlier when the original owner(s) died; manufacturing of wooden moulding planes ceased in the mid-1960s, but they really went out of favour in a big way in the 1920s and 30s with only a hand full of firms left making them by the beginning of WWII (1939). Quite apart from dealing with woodworm, which is not unknown in old wooden planes, it can take quite a bit of fettling to get them working again (reprofiling and resharpening the cutters, possibly dealing with wedges which are missing, the wrong one or have shrunk over time), with some plane bodies so warped or twisted that they will never work again. They don't need to be far out of whack to make them into nothing more than wall ornamants - and believe me, I've bought my fair share of those over the years!. But seriously, unless you are already into hand planes in a big way and can sharpen a block plane so that it will take an almost transparent gosammer-thin shaving off a piece of wood - I really wouldn't bother with moulding planes because without the basic skills, only frustration awaits

Above: Not a brilliant photo, but an example of replacement moulding repairs done in the field. The mouldings at the tops of the pillasters to the left and right of the opening needed to be remade, using a piece of moulding from elsewhere in the building as a template. In fact this repair required a quarter round, a square piece, an ogee with a quirk and a beaded piece to be produced - the corridor opening was blocked off with a hardwood frame glazed with 15mm pyro (fire-proof) glass - this meant that the mouldings around the tops of the pillasters needed to be removed and cut to accommodate the glazed light frame, then reinstalled either side of the frame. Quite a bit of the original mouldings had simply disappeared over the years, or was damaged (split, etc), hence the need to make about 4 or 5 feet of a built-up moulding. Note the copious quantities of pins and fillers! You can also see a plaster moulding repair where the left side has been repaired, but the right side isn't yet done (using a zinc plate template to run the plaster in situ)

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Elongated sub-bases to support routers on two rails such as the "sticking board" in the previous post can be made up from a scrap of 6mm plywood, or better a piece of 6mm Tufnol or acrylic plastic.

Obviously there is a limit on how wide you can go with a heavy router such as a DW625, but a sub base of up to an extra 5 or 6in (125 to 150mm) width over the original is feasible in 6 to 8mm thick material. There is a short article on how to make such a base here and this guy on YouTube shows some interesting sub-bases, although I had to turn the sound off and just fast forward to see what I wanted to...

Edit: I found out that Trend are still selling a sub-base called the GB/PLATE which is 290 x 197mm and 8mm thick:

Whilst these are drilled to screw directly onto the bottom of a DW625 type router, my issus is that they cost about £40 to £45. A piece of 400 x 200 x 8mm clear 8mm acrylic plastic with polished edges from eBay would set me back under £20 and take maybe 30 minutes to make a bigger sub-base. You pays yer money...

At one time some of the better router manufacturers (German in the main) offered factory-made over-sized sub-bases, such as this rather nice 50 year old sand-cast aluminium Elu model which was designed to fit all their larger plunge routers, including the later MOF177 (the original DW625) as well as the earlier MOF11, MOF31, MOF77 and MOF98 models:

Unfortunately it is still incomplete, as it is still missing the large loop handle it would have had at the front together with the cast ally lipping sub-base that would have attached via the six screw hole on the underside (used to flush trim hardwood lippings on furniture), but it does extend the base of the router to give a large support surface, allowing the router to be supported by two pieces of fence, as above, a bit like a girder bridge. It comes with a rather handy (manual) side fence, too

BTW, the "collet extender" in the first photo isn't actually a collet extender - it is an Elu OEM collet converter which converts the router from using a peculiar German-type M12 x 1mm threaded bits to the later standard Elu/deWalt large collets (as used in the DW625 et al). The converters are rated at 25,000 rpm which isn't a problem for this router as it only manages 18,000 rpm max ('coz it's old school technology designed in the 1960s)

 

[opps]

@JobAndKnock

Thank you, once again for the comprehensive advice.

I shall digest it when I finish work.

 

[opps]

Thanks to your advice, I managed to fudge a "secondary fence" on the other side of my 1/4" Makita palm router (out of scraps of timber) which allowed me to route from the front face of the sill (which I had already epoxy'd in place). Unlike the Dewalt, the cheap Makita fence has a height setting.

It is far from perfect but it is high enough to "get away" with it.



The bottom rebate is a tad smaller than it should be. I think that is because I used a Vitrex profiler to copy the profile. I didn't have access to a section of time where I could copy the profile on to card at right angles.

I may sand in a more pronounced rebate, or I may not... I under quoted on the whole exterior. I have primed and undercoated it, there is no "visible" join (aside from the rebate tapering off).

Following your extremely helpful advice, I will be better suited to tackling such jobs in the future. I will also be better suited to guessing how much work is involved.

I won't tell you how long I spent working on it, you'd take the pee

Once again, I really appreciate your help and the time that you took to compose it.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I may sand in a more pronounced rebate, or I may not... I under quoted on the whole exterior. I have primed and undercoated it, there is no "visible" join (aside from the rebate tapering off).

Rather than sanding, which can give a "soft" edge, I find a shoulder rebate or bull nose rebate plane is a better bet (even a cheap one):

I won't tell you how long I spent working on it, you'd take the pee

I very much doubt that! Whenever I have to quote on jobs like this I "guesstimate" how much time I think it will take, then I at least treble it, knowing full well that some penny-pinching bean counter will reduce the estimate and that I'll still end up earning a pittance on more than half the jobs I do like this. Labour of love at times

Once again, I really appreciate your help and the time that you took to compose it.

Thank you. Hopefully it will help you estimate a bit better next time. TBH with a selection of half a dozen or more core box cutters:

you can do the majority of concave mouldings you come across (and the little tilting base that you can get for the Makita/Katsu routers makes it even more possible). The rest is a block plane or a shoulder rebate plane, shaped bits of wood, sandpaper - and quite a bit of sweat equity!

 

[opps]

Yet again, many thanks.

TBH, on this job I an not going to buy a shoulder rebate plane, but I respect your advice and will consider it in the future.

In the end, I used a core box cutter in the small Makita to get me to the point where I could use sandpaper and rounded bits of timber but TBH it was a cheapo one that came in a set. That said, I was only removing small amounts of stock in each pass.

My Festool LS130 (linear) sander took some of the hard work out of the process. Years ago, I purchased the bit of kit that allows you to create your own profiles. You basically glue sand paper to the profile and then run the sacrificial base over it until you have the mating base. You then glue the velcro to it. It is far from perfect but it takes up some of the heavy lifting. The down side is that it is very rigid. My profile was from a different job (many years ago).

All of the manufactured profiles that I purchased from Festool for the LS130 went orange and fell apart. The same has happened to various bases for my 150 and 125 Rotex sanders, but that is another story...