Bits and More Bits

 

My last post left you at the above picture of a lot of router bits and a pile of scrap wood. The mornings were a bit brisk this past week forcing me to put on a jacket and wait until late morning to get any gluing done but there is still time to do something productive out in the garage so I started in.

Most of the scraps were cut from undesirable sections of the lumber, most containing large defects. Back in the day, these would have been thrown into a burn pile and torched but in modern times, things like epoxy render even these boards salvagable. So I taped up the back sides of the defects, mixed up a batch of deep pour epoxy, tinted it black and poured it into the defects. The epoxy was left over from a project my oldest had done years ago after finding a skeletonized mouse in in the garage. We suspended the skeleton into a silicone cube mold and poured epoxy around it to turn it into an interesting paper weight which she still keeps on her desk. Anyway, I had leftover epoxy and decided to use some of it up.

I wish I hadn't. It took two days to set up and was extremely liquid, so it kept seeping around my "dams of tape" and leaking all over everywhere. Finally after a day and a half, it became more like a paste so I smeared some into the defects and waited overnight for it to harden the rest of the way. What I was left with after sanding the next day was terrible looking. So I got out the quick cure epoxy that I had used on a few of the defects on the boards used in the hand tool cabinet which is much more viscous and sets a lot faster and spent yet another day touching up the spots. That time after sanding they looked a lot better.

I spent an hour on the table saw cutting some simple rabbet joints and dadoes and along with two scrap pieces of plywood, glued up a box that I will eventually screw to a wall somewhere. You can see some of the defects that I had to repair on the lower and right boards of the box below. Next, I'll start making some holders for all my various bits, 1/4" ones on the left and 1/2" ones on the right. I'm not sure I'll be able to fit all the 1/2" bits on the right so some may have to go over to the left side anyway. 

The size of the bits is determined by the shaft diameter. The bigger 1/2" shafts are used in my bigger routers with more horsepower and can remove a lot of wood. the smaller 1/4" shaft bits are mainly used in my small "palm" sized routers for smaller tasks like rounding over edges and such.