Workbench retrofit

[andrew whicker]

I guess what you could do (and it sounds like you thought of this) is get the opposite router bit (brg on top) and finish from the bottom. So two passes. One from top and one from bottom

[Phillip Mitchell]

How big / long is your jointer? This is exactly what jointers are made for, and I have jointed similar sized material plenty of times.

If you set the depth of cut to clean up the discrepancy ideally in one pass and start off square the then the inertia of a hunk of wood that heavy will not want to move out of square once you get ~half of it past the cutterhead…this is more challenging if there is substantial twist along the entire length but that’s not what it sounds like from reading post.

Maybe I’m missing something as surely someone would have suggested a jointer by now!

[Kent A Bathurst]

If I faced the same situation, I'd maybe do this:

Not sure why full-face contact is needed for the entire 4" height of the edge?

Top upside down, straight edge running the length, router with top-bearing long bit . Route the bottom [currently on top] of the offending edge. Route it back far enough so that it is narrower than the narrowest part of the top [which is now on the bottom].

Flip it over. Now route a new face at the top of the offending edge. It needs to be straight, normal to the top, and WIDER than the face left from the upside-down pass. I'd hope for 2" face - maybe 1-1/2".

Glue and clamp the expansion board to this face. Counterbore, countersink and drive serious fasteners. I'd maybe go for 1/4" x 6" SS lag screws. Now the expansion piece is in place.

This solution ain't goin' nowheres. Clamp to your hearts desire.

You could always get the auto shop creeper out and scurry along custom-fitting and gluing shims in the gap at the bottom. If you don't, within 90 days you'll have forgotten there's a gap, and within 9 months you'll have forgotten the entire adventure.

UNTIL you add a dog hole and find onea them 6" lag screws. So I might make a shallow saw kerf and filled with red paint to mark their location. Or a wood-burning pen. Something. Conversation piece.



PS - while describing this, I kept thinking of the classic MAD magazine take on The Poseidon Adventure. They called it The Poop-side Down Adventure. The entire bit had the characters arguing if they were going up to the bottom, or down to the top. You gotta be a certain age, I guess.

[andrew whicker]

How big / long is your jointer? This is exactly what jointers are made for, and I have jointed similar sized material plenty of times.

If you set the depth of cut to clean up the discrepancy ideally in one pass and start off square the then the inertia of a hunk of wood that heavy will not want to move out of square once you get ~half of it past the cutterhead…this is more challenging if there is substantial twist along the entire length but that’s not what it sounds like from reading post.

Maybe I’m missing something as surely someone would have suggested a jointer by now!

I assumed laziness was the goal! haha. I know I would try to avoid removing my workbench top. I have a cutter that is bigger dia than my collet so I'm going to see if that cutter could theoretically get down to 4 inches on my Bosch plunge router. For science.

[Michael Dean]

You don't need a long reach router, long bit or remove the top, just a new plan of attack. Clamp parallel rails to the top and bottom to serve as reference surfaces for the router base. Here's is a mock-up using my bench that shows the concept.
Bench Side.jpg