Routers need bits, not just cutting bits, but clamps, collets, spanners, t-bolts, feeler gauges, laptop, and other random crap. So I made some drawers for the crap, to fit under the router bench. This was a chance to explore relief carving, coz I’ve lots more of this to do.

Original image from Ashlyn’s dirty cup pour:

Relief carved drawer fronts:

The drawers are 1300 wide and the router will only do 1200, so the three long pieces were made up with lapped dovetail interlocking joints taken from Jochen Gross’ Fifty Digital Joints.

The other joints were simple finger tenons with dogbones for relief at the corners. I varied these enough so that all the pieces could only be assembled in the correct way. I tried a few blind mortises, but the outside of this piece is pretty hidden, so they weren’t really needed.

Tolerances. *humpf*

The goal was to have all of these pieces just push together. Testing finger joints on small pieces suggested that cutting each piece 0.2 mm undersize would do this. However, oops, small pieces are not large pieces, nor are they pieces made up of two bits of wood joined together. So yeah, there was lots of filing to make everything fit. I’d suggest 0.2 mm for small pieces, add an extra 0.1 mm for large pieces, an extra 0.1 mm for joined pieces, and an extra 0.1 mm where pieces are joining in three planes. Live and learn.

But got there in the end.

I was going to just glue these joints, but bottled it and put some screws in, just in case. It’s probably massively over-built.

I splashed out the NZ$ 200 on PhotoVCarve to turn images into toolpaths. Fusion 360 with the Image2Surface plugin will do this for free, but it’s really struggling – it can take over an hour to process. PhotoVCarve does it in seconds. Total carving time was about 13 hours, with 0.4 mm step-over and a 1/4 inch ball-nose carbide bit. The surface finish needed very mild touch-up with fine sand paper on the steepest relief, but overall, this is straight from the machine with nothing more than linseed-based priming oil.

Turned out all right in the end.

Routers are painfully noisy and throw dust everywhere. If I wanted that, I’d go to Burning Man (again). So:

Step 1 – Dust Shoe

Vertigo do a dust shoe to stop chips flying everywhere. They were kind enough to give this to me for free, as the magnets aren’t perfectly aligned, but it still grips well enough.

Step 2 – Dust Extraction

Dust now gets pulled into a Triton dust collector bucket by an old Dyson vacuum.

This does a reasonable job, although fitting the hose into the dust shoe requires some surgery – the shoe has to be split into two parts so the hose can feed through the hole and then be clamped in place. The shoe is acrylic, so this isn’t hard.

The hoses do pop off the connectors too easily, but it takes twenty-odd litres of dust and chips that are now not spread throughout the workshop.

Step 3 – A Cabinet

It’s still loud, so I used melamine from the shipping box and some random ply to build an enclosure. Long hinge and a wide opening, spaced double layer of acrylic for a window, big handle for the opening lid, and a port for the dust hose. There’s an air filter to let air in when the vacuum pulls it out, but given that the box isn’t that well sealed, I’m not sure this is really needed

Much quieter and the dust is under control.

Best investment was $40 on an LED strip inside the box, for excellent work lighting.

Step 4 – Spoil Board

And a thick ply board to protect the router bed from the inevitable over-cuts, with slots for clamp bolts and shallow marks for aligning stock.

Step 5 – Route ALL the things

Design from Nathan McIntyre.