Richard Hash
05-21-2015, 11:49 AM
Yeah, the screeching and gnashing (of teeth) noises are coming from me. I'm looking for suggestions as to how to "fix" ("mitigate" is probably a more accurate term) something I'm still irritated about.
I'm making a new router table top to hold an Incra Mast-R-Lift II. It's not my first one (I've made two before), and while I still can't really say exactly what went wrong, it's obvious the template used to route out the insert hole creeped. It's a 36"x28" top, made of two 3/4" MDF glued-up slabs, with 7/8" oak edging, laminated top and bottom. It's well-supported with "flatteners" on the bottom. I'm not a fan of rabbeted ledges, I'm a "cut the hole all the way thru" kind of guy, and just use plate-levelers (that way you never have to mess with dust settling on the ledges, or getting the rabbet depth right).
The problem I have is that my freshly cut out hole is about 0.070" off side-to-side (each direction)!! It's enough to really bug the living daylights out of me. It's not the templates fault (it's factory CNC machined, Mark Mueller from Incra tells me it's oversized by 0.020" side-to-side on purpose), the dang thing *has* to have moved on me while routing.
So what I've got is a sloppy hole. My options, as I see them are:
Bite the bullet and make a whole new top. Not on my fave list. Not something I want to think about (yet).
Figure out some way to shim it.
One of the (many) things that crossed my mind was to drill some horizontal holes into the sides of the cut-out hole and slathering some epoxy/JBWeld type stuff around the interior (the horizontal holes would be to help it get a "grab"), and then (more carefully!) re-rout out the opening. Is this a crazy idea?
Any better ideas? Trust me, nothing you can come up with is any crazier than things I've considered...
Still gritting my teeth,
Richard
I'm making a new router table top to hold an Incra Mast-R-Lift II. It's not my first one (I've made two before), and while I still can't really say exactly what went wrong, it's obvious the template used to route out the insert hole creeped. It's a 36"x28" top, made of two 3/4" MDF glued-up slabs, with 7/8" oak edging, laminated top and bottom. It's well-supported with "flatteners" on the bottom. I'm not a fan of rabbeted ledges, I'm a "cut the hole all the way thru" kind of guy, and just use plate-levelers (that way you never have to mess with dust settling on the ledges, or getting the rabbet depth right).
The problem I have is that my freshly cut out hole is about 0.070" off side-to-side (each direction)!! It's enough to really bug the living daylights out of me. It's not the templates fault (it's factory CNC machined, Mark Mueller from Incra tells me it's oversized by 0.020" side-to-side on purpose), the dang thing *has* to have moved on me while routing.
So what I've got is a sloppy hole. My options, as I see them are:
Bite the bullet and make a whole new top. Not on my fave list. Not something I want to think about (yet).
Figure out some way to shim it.
One of the (many) things that crossed my mind was to drill some horizontal holes into the sides of the cut-out hole and slathering some epoxy/JBWeld type stuff around the interior (the horizontal holes would be to help it get a "grab"), and then (more carefully!) re-rout out the opening. Is this a crazy idea?
Any better ideas? Trust me, nothing you can come up with is any crazier than things I've considered...
Still gritting my teeth,
Richard