router plane

[Brandon Speaks]

Quick question, my wife wants me to make a batch of these trivets for her family, same design her grandpa used to make. In the past I used my router table, but with roughly 60 passes per trivet something always gets chipped out etc. And frankly I just done enjoy using the router table.

So while usually skeptical of tool purchases she is endorsing a router plane. My question is that I need a 3/8 blade, I had wanted veritas based on several articles but find that the have tons of small blades but then go right from 1/4 to 1/2 and then 3/4.

Lie nielsen on the other hand comes with the 3/8. Am I missing something on veritas? Otherwise in this case lie nielsen is cheaper, any reason not to go with it? It seems to have less blade selection but happens to have the one want the most.

[lowell holmes]

There is never a reason not to buy a Lie Nielsen tool. I don't have their router plane, but if I needed one, I would buy it.

[David Bassett]

I probably don't understand what you're planning to do, but I don't see how you can replace a router with just a router plane. A router plane cuts the bottom of a recess. A router (with the right bit) cuts the sides and bottom of a recess.

[Brandon Speaks]

Maybe I am misunderstanding how it works.

Essentially I want to cut several dados in a piece of wood.

http://i66.tinypic.com/4vgsvm.jpg

[Phil Mueller]

You may want to take a look at my post titled “cross grain dado technique”. A number of folks give great suggestions. Specifically, that the best way is to first saw the sides to depth and then either chisel most of the waste and use a router plane to finish, or use the router plane to remove all the waste to depth. Either way, since the walls are already established, you could use a 1/4” router plane blade and just move it from one side to the other as you clean out the remaining waste.

I would recommend running the router plane into the center from both sides to avoid any potential tear out.

[David Eisenhauer]

One issue with the LN router plane is that it is set up for that 3/8" blade and you have to buy their adaptor to be able to use their smaller blades. It would have been very, very nice if they had offered a 1/4" blade for the larger router plane as well because 1/4" is a very popular dado width. Maybe I can't see what you want to do, but do you need to crate a jillion dados or can you just glue some strips down?

[David Bassett]

I can see why you don't want to use a router table, but....

Phil gave the info I could on doing it with hand tools.

Honestly, if I had too many of those to make I would probably start investigating CNC machines.

[Jim Koepke]

This isn't a job for a router plane. This would be easy, though very repetitive, with a dado plane.

With a router plane you would need to saw the sides of your dados and grooves. (To me that is what it looks like, one side of the trivet has grooves going with the grain and one side has dados going across the grain.) Sawing the sides of your trenches would be rather easy if you have a table saw to add to the mix.

A dado plane is made to cut across the grain. It can also plow a groove. A plow plane can cut dados, but then it relies on nickers to keep the sides from chipping out. Dado planes have nickers or they aren't really a dado plane. They usually also have a skew to the blade.

Unfortunately finding a decent dado plane may be the hard part.

jtk

[Brandon Speaks]

Yes is appears I misunderstood how I could do it with a router plane.

The result requires making 6 dados per side 3/8 inch wide and deep with a 3/8 inch space between them.

My theory was just set the fence on the router plane and make 8-10 passes each.

The reason I wanted to find a hand tool method is I am frustrated with the process on the router table. First I am fairly inexperienced with the router table I got a bosch router and table as a gift a few years ago and really barely used it until my wife wanted this project recently. First mistake was taking two big of bites with the cut, reducing it to 1/16 per pass helped (although now there are 18 tool adjustments to hit every width and depth, next issue was getting the fence adjusted right, I cut some wooden spacers and use them to align the fence which solved that. Now there are two problems which Im sure are both user error, fist in the 72 or so cuts per piece I will mess up a cut on about 1/4 of the pieces and trash it. Second most pieces have at least one or two spots where it chips off the corner. This good be a bit speed issue, or maybe solved with a jig or sled to support the piece at the back of the cut. Anyway trouble shooting that is probably a post for the general wood working forum.

Also the router and shop vac combo are loud, I hate wearing a dust mask, and make my shop a mess. If there was a way to knock out one of these with hand tools in 20-40 minutes it would be an easy after work pre dinner project I could do from time to time. It seems like it likely would be more diffacult than that though.

[David Eisenhauer]

What are the dimensions of the individual strips I am seeing? How deep are the dados supposed to be?

[Barney Markunas]

I know it is probably heresy on a hand tool forum but your honey-do project sure looks like a machine tool job. Can you get access to a table saw and a dado blade?

[Phil Mueller]

I’ve never used one, but you might check out a box joint jig for your router table. Run the boards face down instead of upright. Rockler has one and a video of its use. I would probably also consider using an oversized board and after the dados are made, then cut out to final dimensions...this would eliminate any tear out you might get at the ends. For that matter, you could also use a thicker board and plane down to eliminate any corner chipping.

[Prashun Patel]

<Wrong forum response alert ;)>:

Brandon, I would buy a spiral bit and a bushing kit for your router. You won't get much tearout with this - at least nothing that 3 seconds with the ROS won't fix. Make a template from 1/4" mdf and do these with a plunge router.

I believe you will quickly regret doing "batches" of these with a hand tool.

You will be able to do each in a single pass if you use 1/2" starting material.

Because they are small, I would hot melt glue the template to the blank, and hotmelt the blank to the bench.

This would also be quick work for a dado blade on the table saw. In this case, I would tape the bottoms to resist tear out. There are other tricks too like using a ZCI and even scoring the cross-grain cut lines with a knife.

[Al Launier]

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but couldn't you dado long boards on one side on the table saw, then cut the long board to length, and then dado the opposite side on the TS? I think this would do the job faster.

I made these for Christmas a few years ago, but it sure took a lot of work & time as the set up was complicated & individual spacers were required for each curved dado.

[Karl Andersson]

I think the method used to make your trivets from one board only makes sense in a power tool world - unless the wood was some special, rare wood and you only made a few. The traditional hand tool method of construction would likely have been to cut 3/8 " strips of wood, cut to length, then glue or tack them together and include shallow lap joints to keep them from wracking. You could also do full lap joints like a wooden ship's grate - not too tedious to gang-cut the joints with a saw and chisel, and you could clean them up with a router plane. If you did the same thing with power tools, making strips and lap-jointing, you'd have considerably less waste and noise, etc. (I think). Done this way, the final product would be much stronger as well, without all that short grain on the one side.
Karl

[Brandon Speaks]

Thanks for the ideas.

I know a dado blade on the TS would work well. I thinks that's how her Grandpa did the originals I am copying. Unfortunately my only TS is a dewalt 745 so it wont fit a dado blade.

The spiral bit on the router is a good idea, I was using a flat bit.

The strip and lap joint idea is also good. I initially wanted a single piece mostly because that is how the originals were done. But this would allow me to mix wood types which could actually be an interesting look.

Thanks everyone for the ideas.

Making them over sized and planing them down is also a great idea I feels stupid for not thinking of that one. I have 4 or 5 in the garage from the last batch that I will try this on.

[John Kananis]

Unfortunately my only TS is a dewalt 745 so it wont fit a dado blade.

Even with the stock blade, that's only 3 passes per dado. If you still want to do this method, set up a sled, cut out the grooves and dados and then sand or scrape the machine marks.

That's if you want to go power tool route to match the originals. Otherwise, I would go with strips with lap joints.

[Brandon Speaks]

How would I go about gang cutting the joints. I assume just clamping them up?

[Karl Andersson]

yes, clamp them side by side and cut the joints across. A mini story stick would make your marking easier instead of measuring each time. You could likely stack the "sticks" for 3 or 4 trivets at a time, cut the joints, then saw off the lengths and start again.

[Jim Koepke]

How would I go about gang cutting the joints. I assume just clamping them up?

You could also run a plow plane down the length of a long piece and then cross cut the pieces to size. Then put them together.

It wouldn't be as strong as straight grain, but trivets do not need strength.

Alternately you could use straight grain pieces glued across the plowed pieces without cutting laps in them.

There are many ways to get the same result.

jtk

[Frederick Skelly]

Is there some reason this has to be made from a single board? If I had to make a dozen of those, I'd cut 1/2" x 1/2" strips, each as long I wanted the trivet to be. Then I'd just epoxy them together in 2 perpendicular layers. I think it would be pretty easy to make a jig and spacer to guide the glue up.


Just some out of the box thinking that may or may not be helpful to you.

Fred