How to make a groove in the board with a router

Milling grooves in the wood

The groove is widely used in fixing the bottom of drawers, the back wall of cabinets, butt joints, fusion, etc. п. A groove made across the fiber may be called a groove, mortise, and other names, depending on the country, area, application, etc.п. This is used, for example, for fixing stationary shelves in enclosure walls.

Both the slot and the can either go all the way through, i.e., over the entire surface of the workpiece, or miss one or both edges. There are many methods of ensuring accuracy, but machine control remains more or less the same.

Making a through groove

Lower and lock the router vertical movement mechanism. Place the machine base on the workpiece without touching the wood cutter, then start the engine. Feed the machine evenly forward along the workpiece until the cutter exits the material at the other edge of the workpiece. Turn off the motor and wait for the router to come to a complete stop before placing the tool down.

Before you switch on the router with the vertical adjustment mechanism, lower the router onto the workpiece surface and position it exactly at the beginning of the slot. Lift the cutter, turn on the motor and slowly lower the cutter to the set maximum depth. Finish the cutter at the end of the marked groove and release the vertical drive and switch off the motor. Use a chisel to smooth out the groove ends. Making the groove parallel to the edge Most grooves are cut parallel to and adjacent to the edge.

With any router, manufacturers supply bolt-on side rulers (stops) that can be adjusted to position the router at the desired distance from the edge. If you have them, place the router on the router bit and align the cutting edge with one side of the groove marked on the surface. Adjust the ruler so that it touches the edge of the workpiece and tighten its clamping screws. Make the groove, keeping the ruler pressed against the workpiece throughout the machining.

Attach a hardwood rail to the edge of the ruler for more efficient machining

Making the groove

When grooving, the end of one part goes into a shallow groove cut across the fibers of the other. This joint is an improved version of the simple butt joint. Groove grooves provide a decent amount of strength. It is virtually impossible to break such a connection, for example, by pushing on a shelf. If it fits snugly, it stands up well to an oblique load when the force is directed diagonally across the cabinet. Putting the rear walls in cabinets or chests of drawers and the bottoms of drawers makes the entire construction even stronger. Finally, the groove facilitates assembly by defining the position of the pieces and keeping them from slipping.

Using only two types of tongue and groove joints, almost any cabinet part can be made. The basic joint, where the groove includes the full thickness of the adjacent part, allows you to assemble bookcases, toy chests, hinged shelves, or any other enclosures where the sides extend beyond the adjacent parts

Figure. 1. Basic groove joint.Fig. 2. Modified groove/bearing connection.

If these “cut-through” corners are not suitable or unsightly use a modified joint. which is called a groove/bearing connection.

Drawers are also boxes. They are easy to make using the basic slot and slot/bearing connection The WA example is the strongest of them all, in the ST and ST examples you can loosen the front wall. If you want to hide the ends of the side walls of the drawer shown in WA, cover them with a false front wall or use a quarter joint, as shown in 30, reinforced with nails or dowels.

THE MAIN CONNECTION IN THE GROOVE

Sawing grooves with a circular saw with a saw blade set is much faster than cutting them by hand. But with long or wide pieces it is difficult to maneuver around the table. The pendulum saw solves this problem, but it has the inherent disadvantage that its console is usually insufficient for sawing across wide pieces.

A router helps with this trouble. But there are disadvantages, too.

First, if you select more than one pair of grooves, it can take a long time to set a ruler for each side. So use an insert with a width equal to the distance from the router base rib to the router. To install the ruler, slide the insert along the marked shoulder line on the workpiece

Second, the thickness of the workpiece is almost never matched to the cutter to ensure a snug fit. Solid wood parts can be planed or deburred, but plywood parts are difficult to trim. Sawing out a groove for a trim is more straightforward. But this requires two passes with the router. one for each shoulder.

When confronted with grooving, you can make a simple device (photo A).

GROOVING TOOL

The fixture consists of two rulers (one for each shoulder of the groove) and two slats that rest on the edges of the workpiece. One ruler and one bar are T-jointed at right angles. Gaps along the other strip and ruler allow you to install boards up to 300 mm wide and select grooves up to 38 mm wide. Two clamps in an adjustable bar support the workpiece and lock the fixture in place.

Work requires a set of router guide bushings. With the sleeves, the rulers must be slightly offset in relation to the width of the groove itself.

The fixture is made of poplar, but Karelian birch plywood or fiberboard is also suitable. The MB T-nuts and screws are recessed, so the router can slide smoothly along the rulers.

Having finished making, you need to make inserts to fit the rulers. Cut a piece of scrap wood about 450 mm long, 150 mm wide and 20 mm thick to the same thickness along its entire length.Everything depends on the size of the bushing and router bit. Leave the fixture in place while you make and fit four inserts, each about 50 mm long, about 25 mm wide and as thick as the gaps. Ideally, the thickness of the inserts should be half the difference in diameter between the cutter and the sleeve.

Make fine adjustments to the inserts when using them with the rulers in place while milling on the short trim that was sawed off earlier. Loosen the adjustable ruler, put the trim between the rulers and two inserts on each side.

Tighten the screws. Remove the spacers and trimming and rout the groove. If the trimmer does not fit into the groove, adjust the thickness of the inserts.

WORKING WITH THE FIXTURE

Groove marking is very simple. Determine the shoulder trimmer line for each groove by making a pencil mark on the face of the workpiece. You can put the two side walls together and mark out all the slots at once or mark out the second side wall after milling the first.

When the fixture is aligned and the cuts are marked, align the fixed ruler with the mark (photo C), slightly tighten the clamps and make a pass with the cutter, then move the fixture to the next mark. A well chosen notch should fit the cleat without gaps or backlashes (photo D).

THE GROOVE/BEARING CONNECTION

Similar to the main groove, the groove/bearing connection can be made in several ways: on a circular saw and by milling. Regardless of the method, the proportions of connection are as follows: a tenon about 1/4-1/3 of the thickness of the part on which it is sawn, and about 1/4-1/3 of the thickness of the part with the groove. To guarantee a tight and good joint it is necessary to saw the grooves a little deeper than the length of the studs.

SAWING OUT THE GROOVE/BEARING JOINT ON THE CIRCULAR SAW

Since it is a very uncomplicated connection, it is easier and quicker to combine marking and installation. Check the settings on board scraps (Fig. 6 и 7).

Making a cleat tool

When the parts are machined by hand, the cutter itself has no additional spatial fixation. And the overall result of the work, the accuracy of the connection in the future depends on it.

To assemble the simplest design that can handle the task, you will need to use:

• Several guides that remain stationary. They must be lateral and upper or lower.
• Adjust the length of the bevel by using the pivoting strip.

The following sequence of operations is used for fabrication:

• Take a sheet of plywood, at one edge of which the side plates are mounted in the vertical plane. Appropriate notches must be created in the center of the material.
• The sides are provided with guideways. On them the sole of the hand cutter moves further.
• The side rails are secured to the upper rails. Then the stroke of the work cutter associated with these parts has limitations.
• The plywood panel, which is the base of the installation, is also the mounting surface for the sliding element. Then the edge protrusion for the future workpiece is easier to control under all circumstances. Fixation is provided by usual screws, other types of fixing devices.

Guide rail

The guide rail, like the parallel stop, ensures that the router moves in a straight line relative to the base surface during woodworking. Meanwhile, unlike the parallel stop, the router guide can be positioned at any angle to the edge of the workpiece. The guide rail can thus be used to precisely move the router during woodworking in almost any direction in the horizontal plane. The guide rail with its additional structural elements is also useful for routing holes in wood at a certain pitch.

The guide rail is clamped to the worktable or the workpiece to be machined using special clamps. If the basic equipment of the machine does not include such clamps, you can use the normal clamps for this purpose. Some models of guide bars can be equipped with a special adapter, often called a shoe. The adapter, which is connected to the cutter base with two bars, slides along the guide rail during the process, thus allowing the router head to move in a defined direction.

Grooving with the guide rail

A routing attachment such as a guide rail is best used in conjunction with routers equipped with height-adjustable feet. This is explained in the following way. In cases where the support surfaces of the router and guide rail are on different horizontal planes, which can happen if the fixture is too close to the woodwork to be machined, the adjustable tool legs make it possible to eliminate this discrepancy.

Guide fixtures to equip the milling machine, which, despite the simplicity of its design, will be highly effective in use, without much difficulty can be made and with their own hands. The simplest of these devices can be made from a long wooden bar, which is attached to the workpiece to be processed with clamps. To make such a device even more convenient, you can supplement it with side stops. If you put and fix the bar simultaneously on two (or even more) pieces of wood, it is possible to mill a groove on their surface in one pass.

Milling along a wooden batten fixed to the workpiece

The main disadvantage that distinguishes the device of the above-described design is that it is not easy to precisely fix the bar in relation to the future line of the cut. A similar disadvantage is deprived by the guiding devices of the following two designs.

The first of these devices is a device made of a connected board and a plywood sheet. To ensure the alignment of this device with respect to the edge of the slot to be performed, the following conditions must be met: the distance from the edge of the stop to the edge of the plywood (base) must exactly match the distance at which the tool used is positioned from the extreme point of the router base. The offered design fixture is used if the wood is processed with cutters of the same diameter.

Fixture for router grooving

For routing operations with tools of different diameters, other designs are more suitable. The peculiarity of the latter is that when using them, the cutter makes contact with the stop with the entire soleplate, not only with its middle part. This kind of fixture has a hinged hinged board which ensures the correct spatial position of the device in relation to the surface of the woodwork being milled. The purpose of this board is to hold the stop in position. Once this has been done, the board is folded away to make room for the cutter head.

Fixture with a hinged slat bar

Making such a device for the router with your own hands, it should be borne in mind that the distance from the center of the tool used to the extreme point of the router base must match the size of the width of the hinged board and the gap between the board and the stop, if it is provided in the design of the device. In the event that during the manufacture of this device you were guided only by the edge of the cutter and the edge of the groove to be formed with its help, such a device can be used only with cutters of one diameter.

It is not uncommon to mill grooves in workpieces made of wood across the fibers of the material, which leads to the formation of burrs. To reduce the size of burrs, you can use devices that press against the fibers in the place where the cutter comes out and do not let them detach from the surface of the wood being milled. The design of one of such devices consists of two boards that are connected to each other with screws at an angle of 90°. The width of the groove made in such a device must coincide with the width of the notch created in a piece of wood, for which purpose cutters of different diameters are used on different sides of the stop.

Another milling fixture, consisting of two L-shaped elements secured to the workpiece with clamps, is required for milling open slots and provides minimum scoring during machining.

Guide rail

The guide rail is used in the same way as the parallel stop, ensuring that the router can move linearly in relation to the reference surface during woodworking. Unlike the parallel stop, the router guide can be positioned at any angle to the edge of the workpiece. In this way the guide rail can be used to move the router bits precisely in nearly all horizontal directions during the woodworking process. The guide rail, equipped with additional structural elements, is also useful for milling holes placed in wood with a certain pitch.

The guide rail is clamped to the worktable or the workpiece in question using special clamps. If such clamps are not included in the basic equipment of the device, ordinary clamps are suitable for this purpose. Selected guide rail models can be fitted with a special adaptor, often referred to as a shoe. The adapter, which is connected to the cutter base by means of two bars, slides along the guide rail during the cutting process, thus allowing the router head to move in a defined direction.

Slot milling with a guide rail

The guide rail is the ideal accessory for routing cutters with support feet of adjustable height. The following is the explanation. In cases where the support surfaces of the router and guide rail are in different horizontal planes, which can happen when the fixture is too close to the woodwork to be processed, the adjustable tool legs make it possible to eliminate such discrepancy.

Guide fixtures for milling equipment, which, despite the simplicity of their design, will be highly efficient to use, without much difficulty can also be made by their own hands. The simplest of these devices can be made of a long wooden bar, which is fastened to the workpiece by means of clamps. To make such a device even more convenient, you can supplement it with side stops. If you put and fix a bar simultaneously on two (or even more) workpieces made of wood, you can perform milling a groove on their surface in one pass.

Milling along the wooden plank fixed on the workpiece

The main drawback of the above-described construction is that it is not easy to fix the bar exactly in relation to the line of the future cut. Such a disadvantage does not exist in the two designs suggested below.

The first of these devices is a device made of a board and plywood sheet connected to each other. To ensure the alignment of this fixture to the edge of the slot to be made, the following conditions must be met: the distance from the edge of the stop to the edge of the plywood (base) must exactly match the distance at which the tool used is positioned from the extreme point of the router base. The device of the offered design is applied when wood is processed with milling cutters of the same diameter.

Device for router grooving

For routing operations performed with tools of different diameters, it is advisable to use a fixture of another design. The peculiarity of the latter is that the wood cutter makes contact with the end stop with the entire soleplate, not only with the middle part of it. The design of such a support includes a tilting board on hinges, which provides the correct spatial position of the device in relation to the surface of the machined wood product. The purpose of the board is to hold the stop in position. Once the grooving operation has been performed, the board hinges down, thus making space for the router head.

Fixture with hinged bar

Making such a device for the cutter with your own hands, it should be borne in mind that the distance from the center of the tool used to the extreme point of the base of the cutter should correspond to the size of the width of the hinged board and the gap between the board and the stop, if it is provided in the design of the device. In case when making this device you have oriented only on the edge of the cutter and the edge of the groove to be formed with it, such a device can be used only with cutters of the same diameter.

Often it is necessary to mill grooves in the workpieces made of wood across the fibers of the material, which leads to the formation of scoring. To reduce the size of the burrs, you can use devices that press against the fibers where the cutter leaves and prevent them from splitting off the surface of the wood being cut. One such device consists of two boards that are joined together with screws at an angle of 90°. The width of the groove, made in such a device, must coincide with the width of the notch created in the product of wood, for which different sides of the stop use cutters of different diameters.

Another milling fixture, whose design consists of two L-shaped elements fixed on the woodwork to be machined with clamps, is required for milling open slots and ensures a minimum amount of scoring during machining.

creating studs on beams and boards

The machining is done using the following sequence of operations:

• The part to be machined is mounted on the plane from the bottom side.
• The edge of the part where the tenoning process takes place must fit into the notches on the guide rails at the top. The design moves inward until it hits the end.
• The sliding element must be fixed, maintaining a defined position.
• Apply a wedge tool to connect the guides and the plane at the top to each other.
• Connecting a hand-held router to the upper guide rails.
• Using a router tool on a home router table, the wood at one side is removed.
• When the first side of the workpiece is machined, start the second side.

The operation will only be successful with high levels of output and precision. Tuning refers to the mandatory action before tools are turned on. To solve the question, the actions are performed with the following sequence:

• The milling tool is lowered until it reaches the surface of the base.
• Measuring the thickness of the part.
• The result in thickness divided by 4. The bottom line is the parameter of the distance, which is adhered to, raising the cutter over the base.

Homemade device for cutting a tongue and groove: photo

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With our own hands Carpentry A groove cutter with our own hands

Circle and pattern milling

With the help of factory or home-made templates, gauges and other devices it is possible to cut rather complicated patterns, even circles, circles and curves.

Cutting out circles

Using an ellipsograph (centered rod), you can move the router in a circle to mill circular grooves or chamfer workpieces in the shape of a disk. The ellipsograph is usually mounted in one of the guide bar clamps. The medium ellipse is good for small items such as cutting boards for cutting loaf or cheese.

For larger operations (e.g. edge trimming of a circular table) fasten the router with screws or bolts to one end of the plywood strip, cut a hole in it for the router and hammer in a nail at the other end to act as a centerpiece. To make sure the center does not leave a hole on the surface of the product, glue a small piece of plywood with double-sided adhesive tape (duct tape), then mark the center already on this overlay.

Working with a template or copier

Working from the template is a quick and easy way to make identical elements, and if the quality of the template itself is high enough, every time an excellent result is guaranteed. In order to repeat the shape of the template precisely, milling machine manufacturers make guide bushings for the template.

It is simply a ring with a cylindrical flange at its inner radius. It is fastened to the router’s base plate in coaxion with the cutter, which goes through the hole of this sleeve. The bead slides on the edge of the template, repeating its profile exactly. When making the template, it is necessary to consider the difference between the diameters of the bead and the cutter.

Make templates out of stable sheet material such as plywood, particle board, or medium-density fiberboard. The template can be attached to the product both with nails and double-sided adhesive tape.

Making the groove for the groove

Use a block or batten, for example with screws, as a guide when making the groove in the wide board. The rail should be larger than the board and extend beyond it on both sides, so that the router presses firmly against the guides for the entire length of the pass slot. For a groove wider than the cutter diameter, mount two parallel guide rails that line up the cutter on both sides of the groove.

Always make the first pass with the tool on the right guide, then move the router to pass on the left guide. With this method, the rotation of the cutter helps move the machine along the ruler when cutting a one-sided dovetail after the first pass, replace the dovetail cutter with a straight cutter.

Cheap and sulfurous

Wood carving is always beautiful, rich and expensive. This is done by talented people, artists or sculptors. But there are ways of carving, which anyone can do. For example, it is very easy to cut patterns with a hand router on wood. The work is performed with a small diameter end mill along the contour of the pattern. To do this, you need to pick up a board of hard rock, nail a stencil cut out of cardboard, and mill according to the template.

Any power milling machine is suitable for the work. It is desirable that it was light and comfortable, then it will be easier to copy the drawing. Therefore, it is not necessary to worry about what to choose a milling machine for beginners, the main thing is to pick up cutters with a diameter of 2 millimeters or more. When working, you need to show diligence to evenly pass a thin mill on the contour of the figure and not to break it. The next step is deepening the background, for this purpose a large-diameter flag cutter is used.

Wood mill “Dovetail

Grooves and studs in similar circumstances: only half the normal width. This is due to the peculiarities that the connections of this variety have.

The main thing is to correctly adjust the device, to fix it in a suitable position.

The tongue and groove joint should result in a certain gap. It is necessary so that you can then conveniently use the glue compound.

How to choose a groove with a router?

The solution to the problem depends on where the grooves are located, what size they have. You can give a few recommendations for home craftsmen:

• Using an open groove involves fixing at the tabletop, holding the workpiece along the cutter.
• The accuracy is determined by the height of the cutter, the location of the bar.
• It is recommended to use wood scraps for test operations. This allows you to avoid mistakes.
• Selection is carried out in stages, with several passes.

The main thing after finishing each stage in time to get rid of waste wood. Then the tool will definitely not suffer from overheating. The easiest way to get the job done is to use a template cut out of plywood. The cutter itself runs over it with the bearing in place.

Working principles with a hand router

Crosscutters are dangerous work tools. high-speed rotating cutting parts can cause serious wounds, and chips are flying out from under the tool too. And while most models have a face shield that deflects the main flow of chips, goggles don’t hurt. So working with a handheld wood router requires attention and concentration.

One of the models. with a vacuum cleaner connected for chip removal

General requirements

Work with a hand router on the wood will be easier and more pleasant, the products will turn out normal quality, if you meet some conditions:

• Cutters have to be sharp. It is difficult to assess this parameter “by eye”, so you should be guided by the working moments: if the motor is strongly heated and / or the machined surface is not smooth (they say “dirty”), then the cutter is blunt. It must be replaced.
• Workpiece to be cut must be firmly and securely clamped. You will not get anything good on a bouncing and twitching workpiece.

Workpieces must be clamped firmly. Clamps should be used instead

Not as complicated requirements, but meeting them is the key to good work and safety. Well and the main requirement. the milling must be led smoothly, without jerks, jolts. If you feel a strong runout, change the rotational speed. Most often it must be reduced, but in general it is worth focusing on the manufacturer’s recommendations (found on the package).

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Setting the milling depth

All handheld milling machine models have a certain pitch, which is the maximum depth in material that can be processed by the machine. Quite rarely you need to work at maximum depth, so most often you need to adjust the height. Even when milling great depths, it is better to reduce the load on the cutters and the equipment itself, by leveling. To do this, you can use the revolver stop. a small disc on the bar, which is equipped with stops (legs) of different heights. There can be 3-7 of them on the machine. It is especially convenient if the height of each can be adjusted. This is one of the signs of a high class milling machine. In order to fix the turret in the desired position, it is necessary to use a locking device, which is a small flag.

Setting milling depth on manual milling machines is carried out in several stages:

• tools are installed on flat surfaces, the clamps are released by pressing the cutter firmly against the surface;
• the turret stop is loosened by unscrewing its retainer;
• Based on the size of the required depth, the foot on the turret is selected. To do this, it is necessary to turn the stop disc to the desired position;
• the screws are not fixed and the bar is held with the fingers, while moving the movable pointer so that its value coincides with zero;
• the boom is raised to the desired milling depth and the bolt on the turret is lowered.

Carried out all the actions correctly, when processing the material, the wood router disc will enter it to the depth set.

It is worth noting that good routers are equipped with a wheel, which provides precise adjustment of the processing depth. It makes it possible to correct the depth by even very small values, while maintaining the set values.