Popular Woodworking 2008-11 № 172, страница 6
Out on a Limb BY CHRISTOPHER SCHWARZ, EDITOR My Weird Relationship With My Router ® Learn How. Discover Why. Build Better. P erh erhaps ii was the flames shooting out of the vent holesofihe plunge rouierthat first soured my relationship with the tool. But for some reason, 1 have always had an uneasy truce with my routers. To be fair, the flames were my fault. I had just changed the brushes in the tool and had done a poorjob of lining things up. So when the tool's commutator spun up, it barbecued the little suckers and announced my error with a belch of lire. Thissmall incident pushed me to rethink how 1 do things in the shop. Forexample, one of the biggest strengths of the router is its ability to cut hundreds of / moulding profiles. The problem is that these profiles still need sanding, which is a time-consuming process for complex profiles. And if you get lazy on this point, you'l 1 lose the crisp 1 ines th at a re a hall ma rk of good work. So 1 learned to use moulding planes, which leave a beautiful, ready-io-finish surface. Truthfully, however, mouldingplanes have their difficulties. Holdinglhe work can beachallenge.and you have to be real picky about select ing your wood. oiherwise it will tear out grotesquely. So most days it's a toss-up for me: Spend a lot of energy sharpening, setting up and using my moulding planes, or fire up my router table and make 100 feel of moulding in a morning (and spend ihe next two days sanding it). What's the lesson here? Good work - by hand or power - takes a sharp eye and a bucket of patience. How about joinery? I like culling dovetails by hand, but typically that's for a piece thai has four to six drawers. In the coming year, I'm planning to re-do our kitchen's drawers and build some additional cabinets forihat room. I have a couple dozen drawers to build, plus I have a wife, two kids, three catsandadayjob. I think that my dovetail saw is going to get coated in a fine film of dust as I fire up my rouier on a dovetail jig. Yup, I know ihey won'i look "handmade" but they will look "done." The lesson here? Every operation in woodworking is a irade-off between perfect ion and completion. And finally, there are tasks for which the router is a miracle worker. Making sliding dovetails and stopped dados and grooves by hand isachore. And I've personally struggled to master those for years now. ThenGlen D. Huey (a senior editor at this magazine) showed me some of his router tricksand the din-simple jigs he uses forcut-ting these complex joints. For these essential joinery chores, the rouier has no equal, and I asked Glen to share some of these tricks with us in this issue. The lesson? Always get the spring behind your router's brushes lined up just right. You're going to need this tool. PW Customer Service How can I contact customer service with questions regarding my subscription, including a lost or damaged issue? Visit popu la r wood work i ng.com/ customerservice. Or write to Popular Woodworking, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235. Or, if you prefer the telephone, call toll-free 877-860-9140 and a customer service representative will be happy to help you. When does my subscription expire? The date of your subscription expiration appears on your magazine mailing label, above your name. The date indicates the last issue in your subscription. Can I get back issues of Popular Woodworking!" Back issues are available while supplies last. Visit popularwoodworking.com/backissues. Or if you know the exact month and year of the issue you want, call our customer service department toll-free at 800-258-0929 to order. What if I want more information about the projects and tools I read about in Popular Woodworking? For all editorial questions, please write to Popular Woodworking Editorial, 4700 E. Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236. Ore-mail popwood@)fwpubs.com. Does Popular Woodworking offer group discounts? Group discounts are available by special arrangement with the publisher. For more details, send an e-mail to Debbie Paolello at debbie.paolello@fwpubs.com or call 513-531-2690x11296. Our Privacy Promise to You We make portions of our customer list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we believe you may enjoy. If you do not want to receive offers and/or information, please let us know by contacting us at: List Manager, F+W Publications 4700 E. Galbraith Road Cincinnati, OH 45236 Safety Note Safety is your responsibility. Manufacturers place safety devices on their equipment for a reason. In many photos you see in Popular Woodworking, these have been removed to provide clarity. In some cases we'll use an awkward body position so you can better see what's being demonstrated. Don't copy us. Think about each procedure you're going to perform beforehand. 12 ■ Popul ar Woodworking November 2008 |
