Blaine Harrison
09-08-2006, 3:04 PM
I am in the process of making a sofa table from some gorgeous quartersawn white oak. On one piece of the oak, for the lower shelf, there is a knot that I needed to cover (the other side of the board is not as nice). After a lot of thought, I decided to try to fill the knot with a dutchman (inlay). I had a fair amount of problems making the dutchman and perhaps others can benefit from the frustration I had.
The first thing I did was to buy a router inlay kit from Routerbits.com. This is a brass bushing that fits in most router bases, but not my Bosch 1617. I had to make a substitute router base out of plexiglass. I had actually done this before for another router, so I took a look at that old one to see if I could just drill some new holes. Great, I thought. Just drill and countersink three new holes using my drill press. OK, get out the countersink bits and get started. BANG!:eek: The old base broke when the tapered bit grabbed the plastic. Fortunately, I had clamped the piece down, so I didn't get hurt. I started over.
Lesson Learned: Use forstner bits for larger holes and non-through holes on plexiglass and regular point bits for smaller through holes.
Now on to making the template. I looked on-line to see if I could find a template that would work for my dutchman, but couldn't find anything other than the butterfly shaped ones. So I decided to make my own with just a round hole for simplicity, rather than the oblong, football-shaped hole that is traditional. This should be simple, I thought. Wrong! I actually made four templates before I got it right. The first one was out of some scrap 1/8" hardboard. Just drill a hole with a forstner bit for nice clean sides with no tear-out, right? Yep, the hole was just fine. What I hadn't taken into account was that the collar on the template bushing was thicker than 1/8". Not only did I make this mistake once, but twice when I drilled my second hole in some scrap 1/4" ply. Using this second template, I was able to make a very nice receiving hole for the dutchman (I was smart enough to start by using scrap plywood). However, when making the patch, I realized that the collar was slightly thicker than the 1/4" ply. The router rocked as I cut out the patch and ruined the patch. OK, on to version 3.0 of template 1. I had some scrap MDO plywood that I thought was 3/8". I decided that I would make the football shape for this one. I drilled the larger center hole and two smaller holes at the ends, then took rasps and files and got the template roughed out to a "good enough" look. I clamped this down and immediately realized that the 1/8" router bit was way too short to reach the target and that the 3/8" plywood is actually 1/2". Another half-hour wasted. OK, let's keep it simple, I said... I found some small scrap oak that I had used to practice resawing. This was slightly thicker than 1/4", but still had the bandsaw marks on it. I pulled out my hand planes and smoothed it out, then drilled a new hole. As I clamped the new template to the bench and onto the patch blank, I immediately realized that there was no way this was going to work because the new template's overall size was smaller than the base of my router. I threw the new template on the shop floor, went inside and spent the rest of the (beautiful) afternoon cooking. I didn't go into the shop for three days, I was so mad.
Lessons Learned: 1. Measure the thickness of everything before you get started on even the simplest projects. 2. Be sure that your template base is of an appropriate size.
Last night, I finally went back into the shop. I was determined that I was going to get this dad gummed dutchman made so that I could move forward with this project. (You've got a wood movement problem to solve..... get through with this stupid dutchman, will ya!)
As I stared at the workbench, I realized that the router didn't need to sit directly on the template. It just needed to be stable above it. I took version 1.0 (1/8" hardboard) and cut a much larger hole using the scroll saw, placed it under template 2.0 (1/4" ply), clamped the whole thing up and in about 30 minutes, I had a plug that fit beautifully into that hole in the plywood I had drilled so many days before. Voila!
I know that I don't write all that well, but I tried to make this into an interesting story that included the thoughts and actions (OK, not all the actions of cursing like a sailor) I had while making and using my own router template. Hopefully, you can use this if you need to make a dutchman for a project in the future.
Blaine
The first thing I did was to buy a router inlay kit from Routerbits.com. This is a brass bushing that fits in most router bases, but not my Bosch 1617. I had to make a substitute router base out of plexiglass. I had actually done this before for another router, so I took a look at that old one to see if I could just drill some new holes. Great, I thought. Just drill and countersink three new holes using my drill press. OK, get out the countersink bits and get started. BANG!:eek: The old base broke when the tapered bit grabbed the plastic. Fortunately, I had clamped the piece down, so I didn't get hurt. I started over.
Lesson Learned: Use forstner bits for larger holes and non-through holes on plexiglass and regular point bits for smaller through holes.
Now on to making the template. I looked on-line to see if I could find a template that would work for my dutchman, but couldn't find anything other than the butterfly shaped ones. So I decided to make my own with just a round hole for simplicity, rather than the oblong, football-shaped hole that is traditional. This should be simple, I thought. Wrong! I actually made four templates before I got it right. The first one was out of some scrap 1/8" hardboard. Just drill a hole with a forstner bit for nice clean sides with no tear-out, right? Yep, the hole was just fine. What I hadn't taken into account was that the collar on the template bushing was thicker than 1/8". Not only did I make this mistake once, but twice when I drilled my second hole in some scrap 1/4" ply. Using this second template, I was able to make a very nice receiving hole for the dutchman (I was smart enough to start by using scrap plywood). However, when making the patch, I realized that the collar was slightly thicker than the 1/4" ply. The router rocked as I cut out the patch and ruined the patch. OK, on to version 3.0 of template 1. I had some scrap MDO plywood that I thought was 3/8". I decided that I would make the football shape for this one. I drilled the larger center hole and two smaller holes at the ends, then took rasps and files and got the template roughed out to a "good enough" look. I clamped this down and immediately realized that the 1/8" router bit was way too short to reach the target and that the 3/8" plywood is actually 1/2". Another half-hour wasted. OK, let's keep it simple, I said... I found some small scrap oak that I had used to practice resawing. This was slightly thicker than 1/4", but still had the bandsaw marks on it. I pulled out my hand planes and smoothed it out, then drilled a new hole. As I clamped the new template to the bench and onto the patch blank, I immediately realized that there was no way this was going to work because the new template's overall size was smaller than the base of my router. I threw the new template on the shop floor, went inside and spent the rest of the (beautiful) afternoon cooking. I didn't go into the shop for three days, I was so mad.
Lessons Learned: 1. Measure the thickness of everything before you get started on even the simplest projects. 2. Be sure that your template base is of an appropriate size.
Last night, I finally went back into the shop. I was determined that I was going to get this dad gummed dutchman made so that I could move forward with this project. (You've got a wood movement problem to solve..... get through with this stupid dutchman, will ya!)
As I stared at the workbench, I realized that the router didn't need to sit directly on the template. It just needed to be stable above it. I took version 1.0 (1/8" hardboard) and cut a much larger hole using the scroll saw, placed it under template 2.0 (1/4" ply), clamped the whole thing up and in about 30 minutes, I had a plug that fit beautifully into that hole in the plywood I had drilled so many days before. Voila!
I know that I don't write all that well, but I tried to make this into an interesting story that included the thoughts and actions (OK, not all the actions of cursing like a sailor) I had while making and using my own router template. Hopefully, you can use this if you need to make a dutchman for a project in the future.
Blaine