Sealing an Under-Table Router Switch

I have a Bosch 1617EVS router in my table; it lives there.  It doesn't even come out for Obesity Day. Problem is, routers make unbelievable amounts of dust and they generally have a power switch that isn't made to live in unbelievable amounts of dust.

I have an external safety switch for my router so it's convenient to power on and off while the router is in the hell I call the dust box.  The router is just always on.

Problem: dust gets into the switch so you have to do the pilgrimage to warranty repair to get it replaced.  It takes time.  Meanwhile, you just want to profile something!!

Solution: your local Borg sells a silicone tape that sticks tenaciously to itself, but nothing else.  It is used to seal leaky pipes.  Wrap it around your router to completely cover the switch and it is pretty much sealed.  You can still flip the switch the few times you many need to under the table as the tape flexes, but you can skip the trip to switch Mecca.

Beveling Corners on a Bandsaw

From my previous posting, you saw that I'm working on some shaped handles for a set of drawers.  The back side of each handle has a small 3:1 taper on each side to the back.  This is to soften the feel of the handle in your hands.  Thing is, I can't directly use the bandsaw fence to guide the piece as even the short fence is taller than the high-side of this bevel.

My solution was to put a scrap piece of oak against the fence and adjust the fence so a handle pushed against the oak would get the appropriate bevel.  Problem is that there'd be no support on the outfeed side of the cut.  For this, I put double-stick tape on the side of the oak so it could stick to the fence.  I pushed the oak through the blade until about an inch was on the outfeed side then pressed the oak to the fence (it was basically touching it, but pressure was needed to make it stick).  Now I have support after the cut so the last 1-2 inches of the handle are well supported and don't move around.

Push the handle through with the bandsaw thingy I discussed previously.  This whole setup was just too simple and effective.

Turn a Less-Than-Favorite Clamp into a Specialty Vice

I know I've seen this done before and might have even read about it online, but, hey, it came in very handy tonight so I'm sharing.

I have some inexpensive light-duty aluminum bar clamps.  I got them from a special deal at Lee-Valley, but it turns out they are remarkably similar to those found in Harbor Freight.  That said, if you don't have one, you can get it for a song (though singing in Harbor Freight isn't necessarily suggested...)

Foreshadowing: I'm making handles for a drawer front.  You can see the drawer front here from which 5 drawers will be cut.  Each handle is shaped with a rounded front, rounded edges, tapered sides.  That's a lot of shaping and cranking on the vice to hold it in place will only ding up what would otherwise be a (IMHO) very nice handle.

How I did the shaping is by clamping the handle in the bar clamp lengthwise like so.  You can see the bar is clamped to the bench with a quick-clamp.  Then have a lot of fun with a Veritas spokeshave (a delightful tool).

Normally the handles would just slip out of the metal pads, but I put a strip of 3M Safety Tape on each pad.  You can get cheaper safety tapes (like at Harbor Freight), but usually the 'grit' isn't very consistent.  Might be good enough for this.  I had the very nice 3M Safety Tape from a previous project so it was perfect.

Planing Small Parts

I'm inlaying a French knot of walnut into cork flooring.  As you can see, there are a lot of short parts between the long runs.  Small parts are 100-300mm typically with a miter cut on one or both ends.  Parts are just 5mm thick  (BTW, the picture shows the parts sitting in the recess... they aren't pushed down yet... I ain't done yet!)

The strips were cut on the bandsaw from a scrap piece of walnut.  That piece was so bowed you could poke someone with it from around a corner.  Normally, I'd cut a strip on the bandsaw then plane the exposed surface to remove the bandsaw marks then cut another.  Planing this piece was awkward so I decided to do it after the pieces were cut.  Now, how do you clamp such a thing to a bench to give it a swipe of a block plane?!

What I did was take a piece of MDF and routed a groove about as long as the longest piece in the knot (longer pieces between knots can be done in segments on a bench).  The groove depth is about 2mm leaving 3mm above the board.  Clamp this block to the bench however you like and set the small pieces in it for easy planing.

Note that I intentionally routed the groove longer on the two outside edges so the mitered end could poke into the void and not damage the point.

Calibrate your MFT fence scale with a Qwas dog

Qwas dogs rock.  Some of my other blog postings show uses for calibrating the position and square of the main MFT fence.  Qwas himself (some call him Steve) has some YouTube videos to show them being used for squared cuts in the field of the MFT, etc.

Awhile ago, I ordered a Starrett adhesive tape (metric/imperial) from Lee-Valley and put it on my MFT fence.  Naturally, this needs to be easily calibrated to the cut line. What I did is this:

Put a Qwas dog in a hole 100-150mm away from the cut line (you want something reasonably long to register against).

Put a stick of MDF against the dog; cut with the already squared guide rail.

Measure it; since I use a metric/imperial tape on the fence, I measured it in millimeters since I could easily eyeball down to a third of a millimeter.  Write it down on the block.

Now that the alignment block is ready, calibrating the fence is trivial: drop the flag stop and put it on the measurement of the block (142mm in my case), push the MDF against the dog and the fence... slide the fence over until the flag stop abuts the MDF.  Now go build a walnut keeper box with handcut dovetails to store this precious alignment tool.