Flattening Large Wood Slabs | Wood Workers Guild of America

Foe slabs can make great tables. The problem is getting them flat. Fortunately, there is an easy way to flatten any oversized board using a shop-made jig and a router.

Details of building and using the shop-made jig are in this article, but you can watch the video above to get a feel for the jig and the process. The router sled requires 5 pieces of plywood and four small blocks of lumber.

The router sled should be twice as long as your bench is wide. This dimension is important, as it prevents the router sled from falling off the guide rails.

If the base is too Best Router For Planing Wood Slabs Manual thick, the router bit might not be long best router for planing wood slabs ltd to extend past the bottom of the jig. Make a template of your router base by wrapping a piece of paper around the base. Mark the routee holes and collet location by poking holes through the paper with a pencil. Position qood template on the sled base so that the collet location is at the center of the sled.

Next cut the two side pieces for the sled and glue them to the edges of the base piece. I take dust collection pretty seriously. Not fanatically, but seriously. Flattening a large board creates a lot of dust and chips.

I decided to add a dust hood see Sources to the sled. Before I screwed the dust hood in place I made a shallow relief cut in the side rail to help move the dust through to the hood. I am fortunate to have a nice dust collection system in my shop, but using even a shop vacuum best router for planing wood slabs ltd help a lot!

Your lumber might be cupped, twisted, riuter bowed. Your objective is to remove the least amount of wood necessary to get a flat surface. Place a level on the piece assuming your bench is level and look at the gap between the level and the low spots planiing the eouter piece. Then adjust the height of the work piece with shims until that gap has been minimized.

After you slabw minimized that gap you are ready to secure the piece to your workbench. You can secure the wood to your bench with best router for planing wood slabs ltd pieces of scrap wood. Clamp a piece of scrap on one end of your bench and then butt the wood up to that first scrap.

Then clamp another small piece of scrap to the opposite ltf of your bench. Now place a third piece in the space between the wood and the end of your bench. Finally, lock everything in place by tapping a few wedges in between the last two pieces of scrap wood. If the material is round, like my piece, it helps to contour the scraps to match the shape of the piece.

Securing your work will be idiosyncratic to your particular piece. Best router for planing wood slabs ltd guide rails are simply two straight boards that the router sled rides on. If the sides are too tall then your router bit might not be long enough to reach your board.

It is easy to best router for planing wood slabs ltd shims to raise the sides up if needed, so it is better to make the sides too short than too tall, and shim under them as needed. Planibg small blocks on the ends of the guide rails to give yourself another place to clamp the rails down.

The most important consideration with the router bit is its length. In that case you might have to shorten the height of the side rails to complete your project. Woor Sources. A larger bit will get the job done faster and will likely leave a cleaner surface. Download otd Router Bit Speed Chart I have used standard mortising bits to flatten boards and they worked just fine. Adding wax to the bottom of the best router for planing wood slabs ltd and to the top of the guide rails will make it easier to move the router sled.

The work piece will have tracks from the router bit when you are done flattening it. These are easily removed with either a belt sander or a random orbit sander. If you want both faces of the slab parallel to each other, flip the slab over and repeat this process on the other face. Sources: Dust hood Part Woodcraft Supply www. Router bit CMT Click here to cancel reply. Just what I needed to square off the ends of pieces of telegraph pole.

They are best router for planing wood slabs ltd heavy for the lathe and too tall-awkward for the thicknesser. I was really interested to watch how the operation Best Router For Planing Wood Slabs Limited rourer be carried on, but video could not opened. Hi Hossein.

The images from this video have now been fixed. We are sorry for any inconvenience. If you are still having problems please give our s,abs service team best router for planing wood slabs ltd call at Great idea. I wonder if a small window cut out a square and cover with plexiglass on each side of the router would give you a better view of that has been cut and what remains??

I also see this being useful on more than a cookie. What about a rough-cut mantel ltdd from a log? Yes a window might help but you can develop a good feel for where you best router for planing wood slabs ltd at when using this setup even without having that level of visibility. Ebst technique can be used for slabs of all sizes and is an effective way to flatten unruly stock for any number of different projects.

This is the best info on a router sled i have seen so far. The router bit and speed info was excellent. I would use a chain saw to level the piece and then sand it smooth. I would use an Festool MFT table to secure the piece to the table and not require the elaborate plywood jig to secure to the table, which seems far too nice to mess up.

All in all, I suspect doing it my way would save a lot of time and plywood. The shim on the bottom serves to stabilize the work piece so that you are working on a constant plane as you flatten. Once the work piece is stabilized, the router is used to flatten. That was a very good way of doing wiod flatting of a round of wood. My problem with that is that I do not use power tools only hand tools. How would you all suggest that I do the flatting using say a hand plane would you suggest that I go in a circle so as not to gouge the wood.

I understand that lrd are most power tool advocates and only use hand tools on occasions, well I am the other way around and only use power rouuter occasionally. So, how would you suggest I tackle the problem. You could do this with hand planes. Fof winding sticks to be sure that you are keeping things flat. Start with a 4, ofr 45 degrees fro the grain. Then, finish with a 6, going with planig grain. So master woodworker George Vondriska gives you a ld rundown on a couple ready-made guitar kits lrd are available ror you to….

Having a hard time getting a good grip on your screwdrivers? Use this quick tip from Dave Munkittrick to make your screwdriver handle larger and easier to grip. Dovetails are widely viewed in the woodworking world as a mark of premium craftsmanship. Cutting them with variable ltv creates a strong visual appeal, and the appearance of a hand-cut approach.

Master woodworker George Vondriska demonstrates how to use a router, dovetail jig and guide block to make concentric variable spaced dovetail joints without the…. Master woodworker George Vondriska demonstrates the best way best router for planing wood slabs ltd safely cut perfectly straight plastic laminate with your table saw.

Remember me. Lost your password? Privacy Policy. LOG IN. Search for:. Become A Member. Duration: Description Discussion Wood slabs pkaning make great tables. Economic Screwdriver Grips Having a hard time getting a good grip on your screwdrivers? Concentric Variable Spaced Dovetails Dovetails are widely viewed in the woodworking world as a mark of premium craftsmanship.

Cutting Laminate on a Table Sllabs Master woodworker George Vondriska demonstrates the best way to safely cut perfectly straight plastic laminate with your table saw.

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Jan 22,  · I surface plane very successfully with a router and sled all the time. I wish I had a planer and wide belt sander big enough for 11’ slabs, but that’s far fetched. I just don’t want to pay for a $ Amana bit or comparable bits and am looking for the next best bit. Anybody have experience with the magnate bits?-- Whiskey Creek Woodmill & Co. Jan 16,  · The best way to start out .. Get a router kit with both a fixed base and a plunge base, so you'll have both capabilities. The fixed base will be fine for planing slabs and other hand held operations where you can adjust the bit height/depth by rotating the motor in the housing. Dec 19,  · Second, since I used 12 inch floor joists the table was a bit low for the thinner slabs, so the 4x4s brought up the top surface of the slabs closer to the router. SLED: It was a bit of a challenge getting the 2 bridge boards in the sled flat enough for my liking, but with some sanding/planing and adding stiffeners they turned out fairly well.

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