router rails

Hey Rob
Great set up. I have one I paid $300 for made from cnc rail. I bet yours works just as good.

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

Rob,

That is brilliant. Thanks for sharing.

-- pcguy http://www.simplepctalk.com

Hi Jim , I lease time from a CNC shop for stuff like this , but it’s Saturday and the customer wants the door back by Monday so sometimes it is quicker to just do it yourself !

That’s a real nice set up Rob. It seems to do a very good job. What kind of bit are you using?

-- Mike, American in Norway

The bit is a flat bottom 1 1/4 dia mortise by freud

Awesome setup! I’ll have to make one . Thanks for posting .

Great job!!

-- Rj's Woodworks,San Jose & Weed Ca,

I can’t wait to make my own. Is there a reason for the stainless? other than no rust.

-- I'm not here for your amusement. You're here for mine - Johnny Rotten

I used stainless because I have a lot of it in my scrap pile . When it is waxed this jig slides silky smooth thereby taking the “work” out of machining large surfaces . I’m also thinking of adapting a large sander to the sled for pre-finish of tables and slabs -

Will you do anything to return the weathered look to the parts that have been beautifully smoothed by the router? Also, how do you go about matching stains on old doors that you didn’t make, or do you ever do that?

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Gary,
Yes, this door frame will be re-worked to match the old panel on the inside. First I sand to remove any trace of machining marks, then I use a Japanese adze and completely rip the face away of any exposed wood. Next comes a spoon plane to clean up, then sand blast, wire wheel, nylox, and touch up with hand sanding. I use a pure tung oil base with my own tints and let it sit for 1 wk. then, water based hand rubbed glaze, then sanding sealer, then enduro low gloss spray finish- 3 coats with scotch brite in between. This week I did a bunch of hand made flooring, stair treads, risers, baseboard trim, and 3 sets of doors this way. To see the finish in person, it is distress unlike any other.Two of the doors I did clad with old growth wood in a vacuum bag along with this distress as they were fire rated for building to building bulkheads (a real pain in the butt).

40’ Long? There’s a king somewhere in this world that needs a table for his knights. Great setup!

I should probably do a post on my torsion box table assembly. Besides flat stuff it is also great for projecting curves and arches , and yes I actually get requests for objects that long -

This is a great looking jig! Looks solid and accurate. Great job!

-- Never board, always knotty, lots of growth rings

Rob,
That’s a ton of great info! I’m going to have to look up quite a bit of it. The only part I expected was the sandblasting bit. So you hack away at the door with an adze? That seems risky! Do you climb up on top of the table to swing that thing? The vacuum bag is to pull things together to laminate on (or to?) the old growth wood? I’m a bit more unclear on that bit. Thanks!

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Simple and effective….....good one socalwood.

-- I will just keep doing it till I get it right.

Really nice hun, sometimes the simplest jigs work best!

-- The wood slayer - Yes dear I did plan to make more kindling out of that wood I have been drying for the last year - honest!

Looks great, I spend half of my shop time creating jigs!
This has a place in my shop,
thanks for sharing

-- Jerry - Rochester, MN *Whether you think you can or you can't, you are probably right*

Jerry , In a small woodworking shop , jig making is a defining factor in the quest for profitability -

Cool, I plan on making this when I build an edge grain workbench. Thanks for the idea, I couldn’t come up with a decent way to flatten the entire table top until now. Thanks much,
BTKS

BTKS there are several ways to reference or register the rails to your workbench top , because it is big and heavy you might even mount the rails themselves to the top eliminating the need for a large flat table and get by with a couple of saw horses..Remember to leave room for the cutter head swinging around ! Once you have a single side flat everything else becomes easy . You might want to try wood wedges with a little dot of hot melt glue gun here and there to keep your setup stable as you shave away -

Good job on the jig. Looks like it will serve you well for a long time.
Thanks for sharing

-- Kent Shepherd * The goal is-----More Tools!

That is really cool !

Thank you for sharing your idea!!

-- Jack - Remember, its not the wood's fault...

The Freud router in the picture went up in flames yesterday as I was surfacing a slab . It had very few hours on it and Freud said they would replace it no problemo -