Woodworker's Journal 2008-32-6, страница 71

Today's SHOP

Instils and Rail System ' Amana Tool

The benefit of flmana's Instile and Rail System is evident. A plywood panel tits snugly in the panel groove cut by the Instile sticking cutter, while it's clearly a loose fit in the groove cut by 3 conventional sticking cutter.

To set up, you remove the spindle nut and the cutters. (It's easiest to do with the arbor chucked in a router.) Leave the bearing at the bottom, Add the appropriate number of finger cutters for the given stock thickness and then the shoulder cutter. The shoulder cutter always tops the "working" stack. The remaining finger cutters go on top of that, where they'll be "out of play."

You rout one workpiece face-up, the other face-down. When the bit height is correct, the two pieces should slide together with their faces perfectly flush.

Instile and Rail System'

Flat-panel doors are practical and attractive. And making the panels from plywood is economical and labor-saving. No need to plane down stock, glue up narrow boards, then rip and crosscut individual door panels, and finally back-cut their edges. You can cut the panels for a dozen doors from a sheet of plywood in minutes. In addition, because plywood is stable, you can glue it into the frame to reinforce the door.

But the panel grooves cut by conventional cope-and-stick cutters

have a definite shortcoming. They're 1/4"-wide. That's too wide for conventional 1/4" plywood, which is on the order of 7/32" thick, and too narrow for 1/2" plywood, which is thinner than its nominal thickness, too.

Several years ago, the tooling engineers at Amana came up with cope-and-stick bits incorporating adjustable slotters for the panel groove. Hie two-piece slotter can be shimmed to expand it from 3/16" to 9/32" for thin ply. For thicker plywood, you add a third element to the slotter. Using the shims, you can expand its basic 7/16" cut to 17/32" for 1/2" plywood.

Edge-banding Bits:

A lot of woodworkers can't accept a plain old glue joint for edge-banding plywood. They just don't believe that glue spread on the plywood's edge will secure a thin strip of solid wood to the plywood. So, here are a couple of profiles designed specifically for edge-banding.

I like these V-groove-based edging approaches. You chuck the "ply

Edge Banding Bit Set Infinity Tool/Eagle America

Infinity

wood" bit in your table-mounted router and just center the cut on the plywood edge. Given the shapes of the cutters and the odd number of plies in veneer-core plywood, it's surprisingly easy to do. When you switch bits, you use a sample of the cut plywood to adjust the height of the edging bit.

The profiles give you a positive fit; you won't find the edging squirming out of alignment as you apply clamping pressure. Moreover, you get some long-grain to long-grain gluing surfaces, yielding a stronger bond than the long-grain to end-grain match you get with conventional glue-ups.

Edge-band bits that mill both the plywood and the edging produce strong er-than-the-glue joints that align positively. Easy and effective.

The edging has enough substance to allow tight miters at corners. And you can trim the edging very, very close to the plywood veneers without fearing the edging will delami-nate from the plywood.

Todays Shop continues on page 72...

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