Router – Learning, Relearning, Replacing

The instructions that come with the Passagemaker indicate that, while a router is very handy for dressing the edges of the wood parts, you can also do it with sandpaper. Hey, if you are going to spend $2000+ for a boat kit, buy a router. The quality of the contours produced with the router is worth it and it’s a lot faster than sanding. Once you have your router, find a nice 3/4” thick laminated shelf or something similar, drill a hole large enough (1-3/4” to 2”) to accommodate your largest diameter router bit, drill countersunk holes to mount your router, go to ACE and get screws of the proper thread (mine were 10-32 x 1-1/4”), and use some clamps to clamp the whole thing to a nice solid surface.

It’s cheap, it’s portable, and mine also came in handy for cutting the long tapers on the trailing edge of the daggerboard and rudder. In the cryptic diagram below the router, still mounted to my makeshift router table, is inverted and allowed to rest on the edges of two straight boards (shaded grey) with the daggerboard sandwiched in between.


The top edges of the guide boards must be absolutely parallel to each other and spaced far enough apart to produce the taper you desire. I chose a taper of 10:1. Since the daggerboard is 12 mm (1/2”) thick and the top board is 19 mm (3/4”) thick, for a total of 31 mm (1.25"), I placed the edges of the guide boards 310 mm (12.5”) apart. The edge of the daggerboard must also be absolutely parallel to the edges of the guide boards and placed so the top edge of the daggerboard is just below a line from one guide board to the other. The whole stack must be clamped so nothing slips out of position. Now set a larger diameter (e.g. 3/4”) straight cut bit so it extends about 1/16” below the table. Slide the table/router on the edge of the guide boards while guiding the bit over the edge of the daggerboard. Depending on the position of the daggerboard the router “table” may not actually rest on the edge of the guide boards until some material has been removed from the daggerboard. CAUTION: Don’t let the edges of the router “table” slip past the edges of the guide boards – they are preventing the router from dropping down into (ouch) the daggerboard. And, the taper on the daggerboard doesn’t go all the way to the handle so rig some kind of stop at the proper location.

Once some initial material has been removed gradually lower the bit until you have removed as much of the taper as you want. Flip the daggerboard over and repeat on the other side. The plywood in this kit is very high quality so the plies can be used as accurate depth of cut references. I tried to leave the center ply untouched so the trailing edge of the daggerboard had a thickness of about 1/8” (3mm). As I sanded and trimmed to correct slight variations I ended up with a trailing edge a bit thinner than that.

If you haven’t ruined the requisite number of projects learning what NOT to do with your router, beware, routers can be evil. Don’t get me wrong, routers like computers can be wonderful tools. But, just like computers, routers will do exactly what you tell them to do whether right or wrong. However, unlike computers there is no “Undo” choice when you tell routers to do the wrong thing. The golden rule of routers – always try out your settings on a SCRAP piece of wood before you work on the finish piece. I wanted to round off the edges of the handle hold on the skeg with my router. I carefully took a profile view of the table and lined up the flutes of my 1/4” roundover bit so they were just below the surface of my makeshift router table. Then I went ahead and routed one side of the handle hold. The edge was rounded off beautifully. It also had a beautifully uniform “race track” just below the flat surface around the handle hold (no pictures). Apparently the flutes on the bit were just above the surface of my router table.

Now, learning to use a router properly is an important part of working on a woodworking project. But, learning how to make the mistakes you make with the router not look like mistakes is the other important part of using a router. In my case I decided to use the next size larger roundover bit to take a little more material away in the hope that the racetrack would be removed. In the picture below you can still see just a little remnant of the original racetrack in the second ply from the surface.


The bonus to this solution was that I preferred the contour the larger bit gave to the handle hold and decided to do the bottom edge of the skeg with the same bit.

I’m sure there are those who don’t like having so much of the plies visible beyond the edge of the plywood but the resulting contour really felt nice to the hand.

By the way, the second rule about routers is to learn which direction to feed the wood (or feed the router into the wood) based on the rotation of the bit. Do an internet search for an explanation and practice on some stock (normal boards and plywood). After a while you will naturally bring the router to the stock (or feed the stock to the router) the proper direction. One direction the feed will be much smoother and the results will be far superior. (Feeding the proper direction is also safer!)

Some of you may remember the “gold rush” of late 1979/early 1980. Well I got enough cash for my class ring so I could buy a router. Not just any router mind you, it was a Craftsman Super Router! I still remember my first few attempts were disappointing. Burning the wood, chipping out the edge, and discovering that the motor wasn’t held perfectly vertical so I would get different cut depths depending on the side of the router I used. I was disappointed with my purchase but I figured it was ‘the nut behind the wheel’ and for the few occasions when I had to use a router it was available.

As I started using my Super Router on this boat project I was doing OK. I remembered the quirks of my router and things were going pretty well with the exception of the incident described above. And it worked really well when I discovered the aft transom doubler was out of alignment with the transom by about 1/32”. That misalignment isn’t a structural problem but sanding that much on the end grain of plywood filled with epoxy is a bit of a task not to mention trying to dress up the handle hold. A straight trim bit with a pilot bearing trimmed the transom flush with the doubler in fine fashion. The trimmed portion shows up lighter in the picture below.

A couple days ago I happened to notice the plastic housing on my Super Router was loose. Far be it from me to let that go. I can probably repair it! Turns out not so much. Some of the coercion I used to disassemble the router broke the upper bearing mount. Now why the designers at Sears would mount the top bearing in the phenolic resin used to insulate the electronics in that end of the motor is beyond me but that’s what they did. And that’s what I broke. Dang! I’ll have to buy a new tool. Of course forcing me to replace a tool with a new one is like forcing me to eat a medium-well rib-eye steak at Logans’ Roadhouse – it’s not a terribly difficult thing to get me to do ( I sense some understatement here.)

Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears, Hitachi, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Porter-Cable, plunge, fixed-base, variable-speed, soft-start –it’s like being at the ice cream parlor. People who love tools know what I’m talking about. However, I am not making raised panel doors for a living and cost is an issue. Off to the online reviews. Boy, do a lot of people hate Craftsman. One review said any name brand was probably OK as long as it didn’t say Craftsman! I’m guessing my Super Router wasn’t followed up by many successful revisions in the past 37 years. Wait! What about this one. It looks different. And since Sears website even includes the reviews of their rotten models that are now on clearance the user reviews might be legit. One review is by a guy who does cabinetry for a living and he seems to own more routers than I do socks. He says this model is on a par with his dearly loved Porter Cable. And it’s only $80. Other reviews include equally high praise. ‘Nuff said! It’s off to Sears for a router Mfr. model #17542.

Now I am no tool connoisseur, and I certainly don’t use a router often enough to appreciate the finer points of a $500 router. But I am a fairly hard to satisfy consumer and compared to my not-so-Super-Router, this thing rocks. Soft start, variable speed, 2 hp (those alone are worth the $10 extra above the similar 17542 model), nice height adjustment, secure motor clamp, dust collection adapter, aluminum housing and base, and nylon motor enclosure. The base plate from my old router will fit if I need a backup and the motor is not nearly as noisy as my old router. It also has exactly the same mounting hole spacing and threads as my old router (although the holes are rotated 30 degrees off from the front/back axis on the old router).

(Late addition: After some use the heigth adjustment mechanism doesn't work smoothly and the router motor no longer slides through the base housing freely when the locking mechanism is released. Some shavings may be jamming things up since I have been using the router on the table - upsidedown - and the shavings drop into the space between the motor and the base housing. I'm no longer as excited about this model as I was.)

I am trying to keep a very accurate record of costs in this spreadsheet.