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Putting bits in is the other thing, though, you'll want to know. And, if I were going
to put in one of these router bits, this how you do it.
I'm basically feeding it into the collet. You'll feel it bottom out and what you'll
want to do is just tighten it up slightly at that point. But then, pull it out slightly.
You don't want it making contact with the bottom of the base there.
And then, tightening these up. This is pretty typical of most routers. Use two wrenches
because there's two nuts here that turn against each other.
So, what we're going to do is just get the wrenches on. Tighten the bit. This you want
to do pretty firmly. You can do most of it by hand and then use the wrenches. Get a bit
tightened.
Okay. Now, depending on whether you're using a plunge or stationary router, the next step
involves adjusting the heights. And that's different on each of these.
This is the more complicated machine. And, the way that you would set the height on this
machine is that you can use this little turret system over here. This is a way to gradually
take material at successive depths of the wood.
One of the limitations of routers, as opposed to using a table saw dado blade, is that you
can't take out the full amount, probably, that you want at once with a router bit.
So, for example. With a three quarter inch bit, if I need to go a half inch into the
wood, I'm not going to do that all in one pass. Usually, the rule of thumb for router
bits is you only want to take half of their width and depth at any one time.
So, for a three quarter inch bit that means my upper limit is going to be three eights
of depth in one pass. I only want to go a quarter inch at a time. How do you do that?
That's what this turret system is for.
It lets you plunge down to an initial height when you hit the top turret. And then you
can rotate over to the other one for your next pass. Plunge down a little more.
And these are graduated at different heights. And you can customize it. But the ones I have
it set at, you know, these are offset by quarter inches. And then it goes down an eighth and
another quarter.
So, depending on how deep you're going into your wood you just keep going down in successive
rotations of this turret.
So, the only work to do at the beginning is setting the initial height. And that basically
involves loosening that bar so it can move freely. I'll plunge down until I hit the wood.
That's my zero. Because I'm at the level of the wood.
So, what I want to do is just set my zeros, be on. I'll be on the top turret for that
one. That's going to be my zero. So, I'll let that sit there. Lock the bar. Pop back
up.
Now I know if I go from there to turret number two, when I make this plunge I'm going to
be going down a quarter inch from the top of this wood. And only a quarter inch.
So, that's the goal of the plunge router turret mechanism. It just controls the depth of how
much can go in each pass.
Now, actually operating this is very simple. There's a power switch up here. Now all these
routers are slightly different. But this model has the power switch in the top. It has a
lever which enables the plunge to happen. But you can see it's spring loaded.
So, while this lever is out it will just spring back up if I don't let go. If I let go of
the lever down here, it stays.
So, the typical way of operating this is turning it on. And you always have the face shield
toward you. Turn it on. Plunge down to your cut. Let go of the lever so it stays down
there. Make your cut and then plunge back up.
Now, the fixed router is even simpler because we don't have to do any plunging. [So,] the
same principles apply in regard to putting in the bits. You get it in there. You feel
it bottom out. And you want to pull it up slightly from there.
Not very much. You want as much as that shaft to be in there as possible to reduce vibration.
But, you just don't want it bottomed out. Okay. Tighten that up.
Now, with a station router situation, we don't have the option of plunging. We have to just
set this at a height. And in this case, if I'm trying to do what this routers doing I'm
going to have to set the exposed amount of this bit to be a quarter inch. Because that's
the maximum I want to go in a pass, right?
So, I'll set this to be a quarter inch. It's very hard to set these just by eye. With a
ruler or some other. There's a lot of other jigs you can use. But always, always test
on a scrap piece before you go to your final piece.
Alright. So, let's see. I think I have it about right. A quarter inch. And now I can
do my routing .
So, if I wanted to make a slot starting from the end of the piece of wood and going in,
I'm all set. I do my slots, then I have to go back in order to go deeper. Expose more
of this and do another pass.
So, the only other thing to be concerned about with routers is, you need to understand the
rotation of the bit. This determines which direction you're going to push or pull the
router. And it has a big impact on the performance of the router and the quality of your cut.
Basically, what's happening here is, in the router we've got a bit spinning clockwise,
as you're looking down on it. So, what this means, in terms of cutting wood, is that when
wood is making contact with this router bit as it's spinning, I bring the wood in or if
I bring the router bit into the wood, rather, because we're using hand held. I'm going want
to have some push back from the wood onto the router bit.
So, if I'm spinning this way and I come into the wood from the left, the wood is actually
going to push back. Because, as you can see, these cutting edges, the silver part here,
the cutting edge are actually digging out the wood. And the wood is going to push back
on the bit.
Now, the opposite, if you're coming from the opposite direction, which is this way, what's
happening is I'm pushing the router this way. And the bit is actually pulling the wood into
the cut. So, it's grabbing the wood and pushing it in the same way that I'm going.
It creates a very unstable kind of cut. It can catch the wood in weird ways. And so,
when you're doing this kind of cut in the wrong direction, sometimes you catch wood,
depending on the orientation of the wood. But, you generally want to be coming from
the other direction.
So, you always think of it this way. You're going to always wanting to be going from left
to right on the wood.
So, the router bit orientation and the way its spinning are important with routers. And
we'll see that on the router table as well.