I did my first mason's mitre today. 
Along with trimming 3cm off the depth of one of the worktops and cutting around a boxed-in soil stack. And it all came out perfect (to within tolerances ). And the bit is still sharp enough that I can do my sink and hob cut-outs tomorrow.
The local hire shop finally came through with the jig and 1/2" router: £38.50 for a weekend's hire including Tx, router (Hitachi), TC bit (sharpened between hirings), Trend jig and a video showing how to use it. Plus they're friendly helpful chaps. All in all better than the large national chain that has a shop here too. And the jig was brand new, because some fool broke the last one by trying to move between passes without letting the router spin down first.
According to the video, you can make a mason's mitre in about 15 minutes. Took me a little longer, but I reckon that for doing plain 90-degree cuts, I could get it down to under 15 minutes if I was doing it day-in day-out.
I've got to enlist the help of a few friends though: the bolts are inaccessible unless the worktops are carried far away from the carcasses, which leaves me with two choices.
1) jack the worktops up a foot or so to do up the bolts, then lower it onto the carcasses
2) get two friends (so one person carrying each worktop and one supporting the joint) to help me put it in place.
Might be necessary to do the first one (with a few helpers) because there is a corner of about 80 degrees in the soil-stack boxing (it's original boxing, I would have done it straight!!!) so the assembled tops probably won't slot in.
I love routers.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ADDENDUM: I had forgotten that the "dog-bone" bolts are really quite long, now I've found that I do have access to one end of them so I'll just put the nut at that end. Problem solved!
I still love routers.
Along with trimming 3cm off the depth of one of the worktops and cutting around a boxed-in soil stack. And it all came out perfect (to within tolerances ). And the bit is still sharp enough that I can do my sink and hob cut-outs tomorrow. The local hire shop finally came through with the jig and 1/2" router: £38.50 for a weekend's hire including Tx, router (Hitachi), TC bit (sharpened between hirings), Trend jig and a video showing how to use it. Plus they're friendly helpful chaps. All in all better than the large national chain that has a shop here too. And the jig was brand new, because some fool broke the last one by trying to move between passes without letting the router spin down first.
According to the video, you can make a mason's mitre in about 15 minutes. Took me a little longer, but I reckon that for doing plain 90-degree cuts, I could get it down to under 15 minutes if I was doing it day-in day-out.
I've got to enlist the help of a few friends though: the bolts are inaccessible unless the worktops are carried far away from the carcasses, which leaves me with two choices.
1) jack the worktops up a foot or so to do up the bolts, then lower it onto the carcasses
2) get two friends (so one person carrying each worktop and one supporting the joint) to help me put it in place.
Might be necessary to do the first one (with a few helpers) because there is a corner of about 80 degrees in the soil-stack boxing (it's original boxing, I would have done it straight!!!) so the assembled tops probably won't slot in.
I love routers.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ADDENDUM: I had forgotten that the "dog-bone" bolts are really quite long, now I've found that I do have access to one end of them so I'll just put the nut at that end. Problem solved!
I still love routers.
