I am building a 14 foot boat style conference table. Table is 4 ft in middle and tapers to 40 inches on each end. Made from cherry that is finished milled or planed to 1 3/4 inches thick. The edge of the table and both ends will be wraped with fiqured hard maple. I have made the template and I'm ready to trim the table to shape and apply the maple. I have made some of these tables in the past and it kills the normal router, last table was 12 ft long and I used my Festool router with a whiteside RD 5200 bit taking 5/16 cuts at a time plus top edge is ragged sometime where the maple mates. You know the "money shot". This is a curved cut, but a gentle one. Any better ideas? Thank You
template routing
- Thread starter clydeb
- Start date
thudchkr
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- Dec 13, 2007
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- 279
As long as you are cutting down hill, shouldn't be difficult at all to get a good edge. I would use a jigsaw first, staying about 1/8" or less, outside the line, and then using the template, take it off in a single pass using the Festool OF 2200 router. You would have to flip your pieces in order to cut down hill, but this will result in the best cut by far.
Are you using the same templates to cut the hard maple wraps as well? If so, same method should work for them.
Clint
Are you using the same templates to cut the hard maple wraps as well? If so, same method should work for them.
Clint
With that gentle of a curve I'd trace the pattern, skip the jigsaw and lop off the bulk of the material with my TS55, quickly repositioning the track as many times as necessary to get within at least 1/4" of the cutline. Then set the template to within an 1/8" and make a first pass with the router to get even closer. Reset to your final dimensions and make the cleanup pass.
Whiteside's Ultimate Pattern Bit (UDFT9112) will handle it. It's a solid carbide large-diameter compression bit. Expensive but works great even with figured woods. Check it out on YouTube.
For a 1-3/4" top you'll actually need to make 2 final passes since the bit is only 1-1/8" in length, first riding along the template then lowered to ride along the finished edge of the table itself. I've only used it in my router table but a powerful handheld should be fine. Keep the RPMs around 15,000.
Whiteside's Ultimate Pattern Bit (UDFT9112) will handle it. It's a solid carbide large-diameter compression bit. Expensive but works great even with figured woods. Check it out on YouTube.
For a 1-3/4" top you'll actually need to make 2 final passes since the bit is only 1-1/8" in length, first riding along the template then lowered to ride along the finished edge of the table itself. I've only used it in my router table but a powerful handheld should be fine. Keep the RPMs around 15,000.
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