Hi folks. After making up half a dozen hand railing samples, my customer thinks I’ve almost got it perfect. The rail will be pretty close in profile to a standard 6010, but different enough to be a pain in the tuckus.
Here’s the problem. Customer wants the concave part of the railing profile, where it turns in to make the finger groove, to be deeper. Now, I’m only working with a tablesaw and a router table, no shaper. The railing bit I’m using is 1 1/4 in. diameter, and the biggest one that I can find is only 1 3/8 in. diameter. That nets out to only 1/16 deeper, which won’t be noticeable.
I could run the rail over the table on a bevel, and gain about 1/4 in. in depth. That should be enough, but the beading portion of the bit then cuts further into the bottom of the rail than she wants. The bead doesn’t matter – I’m cutting that off anyway.
Short of buying a shaper, which space, money, and time won’t allow anyway, anybody got suggestions? Hiring it out probably isn’t an option, as this is a pretty special rail (qswo glued up to show the ray fleck on the top and the sides). Since I’ll have to make the blank, finding someone to run 50 ft. of rail just isn’t in the cards. Neither, by the way, is making a molding plane <G>.
Thanks for any and all help.
Andy
“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” Robert A. Heinlein
“Get off your dead
Replies
Get one of Sphere's molding planes. Be working out.
Is it possible to run the blank at an angle to the tablesaw blade to hog out the waste?
Sure, that could be done. I hadn't considered it for this job, but I might play around with that idea today.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
Im not quite getting the view, but can you put the railing on its side, on the router table and run a narrow vertical bit up into the finger groove? You could then adjust the height for the depth of the profile.
zen
Andy,
When I lived in Colorado, the guy who sharpened my carbide tooling also made custom router bits. That is one way to go, if the customer will pay the tooling charges. Unless you are going to use this profile constantly, they need to pay the freight for special tooling.
You are in a region that traditionally crawls with machine shops. Ask around.
Bill
All of our machine shops are in China and India now. There might be some retired guys around with basement shops, however. Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
All of our machine shops are in China and India now. There might be some retired guys around with basement shops, however. Andy, you tried these folks?http://www.ridgecarbidetool.com/html/custom.htm I had them make a railing bit many moons ago...but I do agree NJ is kinda like China and India<G>http://www.whitesiderouterbits.com/catalog/CustomTooling.aspThese guys are in NC, closer to Mexico. LOL I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head
Thanks to all for the advice. I ended up coving it on my tablesaw. If you play with the bevel angle as well as the feed angle, it's possible to make some amazing profiles with a 10 in. blade.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom