Yes this can imitate a thickness planer, but that is not all it can be. Paraffin wax rubbed on the angle-iron rails makes the sled slide pretty effortlessly.Use an anti-slip pad and or some blocking to keep your slab from moving around.It only takes one time of the router bit slipping down deeper than you planned to spoil your work. Stop roughly every 20 passes and tighten the router collet.Keep depth of cut less than 1/4″ per pass.The angle-iron sled hangs on the wall when not in use, and the 2″x12″ sides stack and lay under the bottom of my workbench. It was simple build, simple to set up, adjust and take down. I am very happy with how well this is working. Even my son (8yr) felt comfortable running it once I set the depth. I applied some wax to the rails and then started flattening, one pass at a time. To give it a little more holding power, I added a strip of 80 grit sandpaper to help keep the runner from sliding while I was leaning against it. When you are running the router, you lean against this block and it holds it tight to the 2″x12″. I used a square to make sure the rails were square to the 2×4 section before screwing them down, then added the second spacer. Then I used a secton of 2″x4″ with the ends cut at 45 degrees. I drilled some holes in the angle-iron at the far end, and screwed in the spacer. I made a pair of spacer blocks from 1″x2″ that were just an 1/8″ wider than the base plate on the router. It turned out it deflected a little too much, so I swapped it out for some angle-iron. I first made a quick sled using some aluminum angle. The black streaks on the baseplate are just paraffin wax from waxing the rails. When I would push it beyond that, I had to spend more time fighting the cut. As long as I kept the depth of the cut to less than 1/4″ it performed effortlessly. I have this old Craftsman router that I keep expecting to die, but it doesn’t so I keep using it. The router sledįirst I made a square base plate for one of my routers. Shims, if needed, under the bolt/pegs it make the entire system finely adjustable. The bolt/peg sticks out about 4″ on the other side. I didn’t want a clamp vibrating loose and letting the height shift. A pair of pipe clamps hold it together, but the pins hold the height. The pins hold the height, while I clamp the sides to the bench. I offset the holes by 3/16″ (half of 3/8″) from the top, so that when the pin is in the 1″ hole, the top of the 2″x12″ is really 1″ above the surface of my bench. I drilled holes at 1/2 intervals along a diagonal so I could adjust the height up to 8.5″ or down to 1″. They slide into holes and then the bolt/pin sits on the top surface of my bench. To make the height adjustable I use 3/8″ bolts that I cut the threads off of. I decided to make the side rails out of 2″ x 12″ Southern Yellow Pine. Easy to store (not take up too much room).Easy to set up for bulk removal, but finely adjustable when needed.I started to re-think my method and was leaning toward making a router sled to flatten it and remove the bulk of the material. This section is about 4 inches thick at the peak which means I’d need to plane off several inches of oak by hand. I normally like to stick to planing things by hand, so I planed for 15 minutes with a scrub plane and only making a weee flat area. The two prime slabs are in need of drying for another year or so, but I decided to start playing with one of the more twisted flat-sawn outer sections. I sawed it into a few slabs and set them aside to dry. I took a section that was a little under 4 feet long and about 14″ in diameter. They are pretty common, seem to grow fast and make good climbing trees for kids due to horizontally growing branches. I tried to ID it using this oak tree guide but I no longer have access to leaves or acorns from that tree. A while back, a neighbor was cutting down an oak tree that was either a Southern Live Oak or a Swamp Laurel Oak.
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