Router Table (Pt. 4)
On Friday, the plywood I ordered finally arrived, so construction has commenced. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the main differences between my table and Norm’s are the joints. He’s well known for his use of screws & biscuits. For example he used biscuits to join the case back to the sides and internal dividers, and well I find this method substandard. I chose to use dados, but as you can see below this leads to a scenario where 3 stopped dados intersect with a 4th dado.
Normally stopped dados have to be cleaned up with a chisel, but since these intersect with another dado, a router equipped with a special template bit can do the clean up faster than anyone could do by hand. Check out the following photos you’ll see what I mean.
Here's one of the dados fresh off the table saw, all that's left is a little ramp that most people would remove with a chisel.
The secret wepon is this Whiteside template bit, it's cutting length is only an 1/8". Because of the short cutting length, the bearing can actually fit into the dado and ride along the wall.
Five seconds worth of routing yields a perfect dado. Mental note, always doble check the router depth setting.
