(jazzy music)
Marc:Hi, I'm Marc Spagnuolo
from TheWoodWhisperer.com.
Now in this month's Wood Whisperer column
I discussed routers and some of my
favorite tips and tricks that I like
to use in my shop.
Now honestly these are really just things
that I wish I knew when I first started routing,
would have saved me a whole lot of heartache.
One of the coolest things that I learned
about routing was the use of a flush trim bit.
They come in all different shapes and sizes,
but really they're all based on the same principle.
Let's take a close look at some of the ones
that I have on hand,
and then later on I'll even show you
how I use a pattern bit to create
these keepsake boxes that I'm making
for the holidays.
Here are four bits that I have in my collection.
The basic anatomy is the same
from one to the other.
They've got two blades and a bearing.
The bearing is in perfect alignment
with that blade so that as that bearing
rides across a guide or some sort of pattern,
the blade is able to trim any excess material away.
The key difference between these,
you'll notice the first three are all the same.
This one is slightly different.
The bearing is located closer
to the shaft on this one.
Typically when I shop for these
I notice that they'll call this a pattern bit,
but these three are called the more generic name
which is the flush trim bit.
So keep an eye out for that.
The other thing to look for
is whether the blades are straight
or whether they're at an angle.
This is a little bit more expensive,
this particular bit,
but it gives you a cleaner cut
because you're cutting at this
slightly-skewed angle just like
when you skew a hand plane,
or you buy a helical head for a planer
or a jointer.
If you're wearing socks,
prepare for them to be knocked off
because this is the bit to rule them all.
This is one that I picked up
at the William Ng School and has
a lot of cutter heads at a very severe angle here.
This helical-style head on this thing
is going to trim just about any hard wood
no matter how gnarly, no matter how hard,
and you're going to get a pretty darn clean cut
even on end grain here.
This is not cheap, but very sexy.
As a quick example, let's say we wanted
to cut a nice curve using this template
into this block of eight quarter cherry.
I'm just going to attach the template
to the eight quarter using some double stick tape.
There are a number of ways you could handle this.
One example would be to use a pattern bit
with a handheld router and just
run it along this way.
You could also take a standard flush trim bit,
put that into a router table.
Let's pretend that's my router table,
and you'd be able to run it along this way.
If all you have is a pattern bit,
you can even put that in the router table,
flip the work piece over,
and you could run it along like so.
Over the years I've accumulated a lot
of these little quarter inch plywood templates
just for various different projects.
I always hold onto them, label them with the date,
what the project was.
Even if I don't ever make that project again
some of these things really come in handy
like this nice curve is perfectly symmetrical.
It worked great on that project,
but you know what?
It comes in handy for a lot of other things too.
Here's another example.
This is a big leg template that I used
to make these big armoire legs a couple years ago.
The idea here is you would take this
on a very large eight quarter piece of material
I would use the template,
draw the shape onto the leg with a marker
or a pencil.
I'd take it over to the band saw,
trim off the excess,
and then I go back to the router table.
I double stick tape the template onto
the work piece,
and then I use one of my flush trim bits
to clean up the extra material.
It's a great way to get perfect copies.
When you need to make four of these things,
you need perfect copies.
A template is the way to go.
I'm making a bunch of these
little keepsake boxes here for the holidays,
and I've got a secret little lock here,
a little pin that locks it in place,
and the lids slides off on a nice little dovetail.
But what I want to show you guys today
is how I create the little cavity on the inside.
I use a pattern bit and a handheld router
to do that.
Let's jump in.
I've got a piece of scrap here,
and I'll show you exactly how I do it.
I'm going to use my little circle template here
to trace a circle onto the surface.
Now I'm going to go over to the drill press
and use a Forstner bit to clean out
the bulk of this material.
(drilling sound)
I've got a pattern bit mounted in my router here,
and you'll notice that the bit itself
is not really going to be long enough
to go all the way down.
We're not going to get the full depth out of it.
So a cool trick is to go as far as you can,
bring the bearing even with the template,
and go around as far as you can.
That will create, I would say, three-quarters
of the depth that we need.
Then you can plunge down a little bit further,
and now the bearing will ride on the wood,
and the wood will serve as the guide
for the rest of the cut until we get
to the depth that we need.
It's a two-step process,
but it works really well.
Let's jump in and start hogging away
some of this material.
(drilling sound)
As you can see what we've done so far
is we've cleaned out the bulk of the material.
We've got about a quarter of an inch roughly
to go here so we're going to lower the bit
in the router.
We're going to clean out the rest of the material,
and now the bearing is going to ride
on the wood itself.
(drilling sound)
We can remove the template
and you can see what we're left with
is a nice, smooth, even hole.
There's a little bit of burning here and there,
but that can be fixed with
a little bit of sandpaper.
As you can see, flush trim bits
are just one of the reasons
that the router is one of the most
versatile multitaskers in our shops.
Hopefully you'll be able to take
some of those tips and tricks from the column
and what you saw here today
apply it to your shop and make some great things.
Thanks for watching.
(jazzy music)