Fred Voorhees
01-29-2005, 7:49 PM
Well, it was a long day in the shop today. Didn't end to well though. Picked up the flat screen television the other day and needed to fabricate a corner shelf for it to sit on for the new bar room project. The shelf will be supported by two cleats that will be lag screwed into the walls studs in four places. The front of the shelf will have a decorative face piece across it's front and below the shelf will be a cubby hole for the DirecTV reciever, vcr, dvd player and such.
Everything went well during most of the day. Late in the afternoon, I had just fabbed up the front face piece and needed to cut in a bead detail on the top and wanted to also round off the edges a tad. Set up the router table, tightened the bit in the collet and went to plug the machine in. Now, first things first. I don't know why the router was in the "on" position. I always have it off when it's stored. Well, I plugged it in and was greeted immediately with a grinding noise and even sparks from inside the cabinet. In a panic, I went to turn it off by its switch inside the cabinet, but couldn't for some reason find the switch. That was probably just the excitement/panic of the moment. I then quickly went to unplug it, but by then, the damage was done. Turns out that I hadn't released the lock on the spindle/shaft and I guess you know the rest of the story. It wasn't pretty. My Hitachi M-12V was toast. I could have sat right down on my shop floor and cried.
I unlocked the spindle and tried the router. It did turn back on, but there was obviously something amiss as the speed quickly began to climb and smoke was very evident. Turned it back off and decided to give it one more try in about an hour, though I knew what the results would probably be. It ran again but quickly died completely and now is a green doorstop.
I guess it must have been an omen that the Tool Crib catalog came today in the mail. Damn it hurt to lose my baby. I loved that router. Well, I wrapped things up in the shop an hour or so later and didn't take long to open up the Tool Crib catalog and phone in a replacement. Of course, it was another M-12V. Just plain sucks that that had to happen. Funny thing is, just the other day when I was on the router table, I had this very thought about what would happen if I ever started it up without unlocking the shaft. Damn!!!
Everything went well during most of the day. Late in the afternoon, I had just fabbed up the front face piece and needed to cut in a bead detail on the top and wanted to also round off the edges a tad. Set up the router table, tightened the bit in the collet and went to plug the machine in. Now, first things first. I don't know why the router was in the "on" position. I always have it off when it's stored. Well, I plugged it in and was greeted immediately with a grinding noise and even sparks from inside the cabinet. In a panic, I went to turn it off by its switch inside the cabinet, but couldn't for some reason find the switch. That was probably just the excitement/panic of the moment. I then quickly went to unplug it, but by then, the damage was done. Turns out that I hadn't released the lock on the spindle/shaft and I guess you know the rest of the story. It wasn't pretty. My Hitachi M-12V was toast. I could have sat right down on my shop floor and cried.
I unlocked the spindle and tried the router. It did turn back on, but there was obviously something amiss as the speed quickly began to climb and smoke was very evident. Turned it back off and decided to give it one more try in about an hour, though I knew what the results would probably be. It ran again but quickly died completely and now is a green doorstop.
I guess it must have been an omen that the Tool Crib catalog came today in the mail. Damn it hurt to lose my baby. I loved that router. Well, I wrapped things up in the shop an hour or so later and didn't take long to open up the Tool Crib catalog and phone in a replacement. Of course, it was another M-12V. Just plain sucks that that had to happen. Funny thing is, just the other day when I was on the router table, I had this very thought about what would happen if I ever started it up without unlocking the shaft. Damn!!!