# It's a mista-a-a-ake!



## The Warthog (Nov 29, 2010)

Thought I'd throw in a little Men at Work to start off. I was going to cut a groove in a cutting board, and my carefully measured template would guide me a nice groove about 1" from the sides and 1½" from the ends. It was an inside template cut from ¼" ply. I put the template guide in my plunge router, turned it on, and lowered it into the piece. Proceeding clockwise I made the first turn and ran up the edge, and suddenly discovered that my router was wandering away from the template, and had made an absolute hash of my cutting board, which fortunately is for my wife, not for someone important  but I have two more to make, and I now have to cut the edges off my wife's and start making her a smaller cutting board.

Was my mistake in proceeding clockwise? I've just come in after turning off the router and throwing it down on the workpiece, but I'm thinking maybe if I had gone in the other direction, the router may have pulled towards the template instead of wandering. Is this right, or should I just take a sedative and try again? (NO, I won't take a sedative and use a power tool; I already cut myself with a hacksaw today. :cray: )


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## bobj3 (Jan 17, 2006)

HI Roger

Here's simple rule, on the outside edge of a template/board always push the router away from you..  on the inside of template always pull the router to you. (clockwise move) 

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The Warthog said:


> Thought I'd throw in a little Men at Work to start off. I was going to cut a groove in a cutting board, and my carefully measured template would guide me a nice groove about 1" from the sides and 1½" from the ends. It was an inside template cut from ¼" ply. I put the template guide in my plunge router, turned it on, and lowered it into the piece. Proceeding clockwise I made the first turn and ran up the edge, and suddenly discovered that my router was wandering away from the template, and had made an absolute hash of my cutting board, which fortunately is for my wife, not for someone important  but I have two more to make, and I now have to cut the edges off my wife's and start making her a smaller cutting board.
> 
> Was my mistake in proceeding clockwise? I've just come in after turning off the router and throwing it down on the workpiece, but I'm thinking maybe if I had gone in the other direction, the router may have pulled towards the template instead of wandering. Is this right, or should I just take a sedative and try again? (NO, I won't take a sedative and use a power tool; I already cut myself with a hacksaw today. :cray: )


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## The Warthog (Nov 29, 2010)

Hmm. Thanks! I was pushing, but pushing clockwise on the outside of the template. So I went back outside in the freezing cold and tried again. Magically it worked fine, but I blew the breaker twice by forgetting to turn the heater off before I turned the router on, and finally the heater tripped the breaker all by itself, so I just swore a little and came inside. It's only 1º outside, but it's a cold 1º and I think I'll let the heater run for a while before I go in there tomorrow night.


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## papawd (Jan 5, 2011)

I am wondering what is a cold 1 degree is there a warm 1 degree? Haha ... Sounds like they are all cold to Me it was 36 degrees here last night here and that felt cold enough.... warmed up to 62 degrees and that was just right.I hope You can stay warm .....


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## The Warthog (Nov 29, 2010)

papawd said:


> I am wondering what is a cold 1 degree is there a warm 1 degree? Haha ... Sounds like they are all cold to Me it was 36 degrees here last night here and that felt cold enough.... warmed up to 62 degrees and that was just right.I hope You can stay warm .....


Well, 1 Canadian degree is about 34 American degrees. 1 degree is colder when there is a wind blowing, it's cloudy and there's a lot of humidity in the air. It can be quite tolerable when the sun is shining and there's no wind. Now, when we get down to -20 or -30 in early February, that's always cold. The heater in my shed measures American degrees, and can heat the shed up to about 50, that's 10ºC (for Canadian.) Livable. We're very good at making warm houses in Canada.


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## Mike (Nov 22, 2004)

Warren, 1° C /34° F isn't cold to us. "Wind Chill" can cause that to be quite uncomfortable. TV stations here report Wind Chill ratings along with actual temperatures; 34° F / Wind Chill feels like -10° F.

Useful tip: to get the degree symbol hold down the ALT key and hit 0176 and then release the ALT key.


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

The Warthog said:


> Thought I'd throw in a little Men at Work to start off. I was going to cut a groove in a cutting board, and my carefully measured template would guide me a nice groove about 1" from the sides and 1½" from the ends. It was an inside template cut from ¼" ply. I put the template guide in my plunge router, turned it on, and lowered it into the piece. Proceeding clockwise I made the first turn and ran up the edge, and suddenly discovered that my router was wandering away from the template, and had made an absolute hash of my cutting board, which fortunately is for my wife, not for someone important  but I have two more to make, and I now have to cut the edges off my wife's and start making her a smaller cutting board.
> 
> Was my mistake in proceeding clockwise? I've just come in after turning off the router and throwing it down on the workpiece, but I'm thinking maybe if I had gone in the other direction, the router may have pulled towards the template instead of wandering. Is this right, or should I just take a sedative and try again? (NO, I won't take a sedative and use a power tool; I already cut myself with a hacksaw today. :cray: )


When you say it was an inside template Roger, I'm not sure if you mean it was a female template, if it was then clockwise was correct, but if it was a male one then anti-clockwise would be the way to go. It's important that the template guide is kept pressed against the template.
This very afternoon a friend came around with a prepared Jarrah board and a laser cut sign about 2mm thick that, in spite of him being a skilled woodworker and familiar with routers he didn't know how to go about routing this big rebate. I decided that for a change, and because the wood was rectangular, using a side fence would be the fastest way. He was surprised when I told him that I would only advise him how to go about it. The sign was placed central on the board and drawn around with a pencil, and to make it clear where to stop, each corner had a piece of masking tape stuck down. After setting the depth of cut he started routing but soon the side fence lost contact and whilst he was still cursing, I assured him that all was not lost and got him to pop it through the planer a few times after which he started again and did a perfect job using my 1 3/4" bottom cleaning bit.
This novel length story is intended to illustrate that everyone occasionally drops a clanger, the secret is to become adept at saving projects when things go wrong.


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## The Warthog (Nov 29, 2010)

harrysin said:


> This novel length story is intended to illustrate that everyone occasionally drops a clanger, the secret is to become adept at saving projects when things go wrong.


Thanks for that. The groove I was cutting was fairly deep, and I don't have a planer, but the board is very big so losing an inch or so off the edges still leaves a very usable cutting board. I was using my wife's for practice, as the other ones are Xmas presents for relatives.


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## zarpman (Oct 30, 2011)

Hey Roger, Sorry to hear about your mishap and the cold weather, it was about 80 degrees today and had the fan on in my shop. Good luck zarpman Melbourne, Fl.


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## fdcox (Dec 3, 2007)

Roger, I don't know if it would be worth it to you but if you can find a cabinet shop around they will probably run it thru their sander for $5-$10 bucks.


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## gallianp (Oct 13, 2009)

MIKE, 1° C /34° F is cold! it will kill you! 

MIKE, do you only think windows -- trying using a Mac. ℉ may be achieved many different ways.


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## bobj3 (Jan 17, 2006)

Hi

10"+ of SNOW in Denver today and a 10º temp.


Here's a chart of some keys you can use on your PC..▼ ♂ «


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## The Warthog (Nov 29, 2010)

Thanks Floyd. The Wood Shed would do that for me, too, but to eliminate the groove would reduce the thickness of the cutting board to somethng too thin. I'll make a slightly smaller cutting board for now, and do a full-size one in the spring. I want a good big one for a kneading board when I make bread.

I've learned a lot from this little project.

By the way, 1ºC is cold and can kill you, but you can't get frostbite unless the temperature is below 0. You can still die of hypothermia, but your skin will look fine when they lay you in your coffin. We are haivng an unseasonably warm winter so far. We won't be looking at temps much below 0 until sometime in January. It's going to be a grey Christmas.


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