Woodworker's Journal winter-2010, страница 43
Instile and Rail System™ Amana Tool The benefit of Amana's Instile and Rail System is evident. A plywood panel fits snugly in the panel groove cut by the Instile sticking cutter, while it's clearly a loose fit in the groove cut by a conventional sticking cutter. But the panel grooves cut by conventional cope-and-stick cutters have a definite shortcoming. They're l/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. The 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 "plywood" 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. 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 delaminate from the plywood. Bead-and-Cove Bits: A handsome canoe is always pictured Two Edge-banding Bit Sets Infinity Tool Edge banding bits that mill both the plywood and the edging produce stronger-than-the-glue joints that align positively. They're easy and effective. Winter 2010 43 |
