Router made a mess of things

03/20/2009

Empennage

Routed the leading edges. Do they look like crap! It would have looked better if I had taken a stone hatchet and beat at them. I finished gluing the leading edges for my tail together and borrowed a router with a table mount from a friend this weekend to round off the leading edges. However, what I ended up doing was burn the edges and not take off nearly enough. I was so PO'd that I took some 100-grit sandpaper and started sanding off the char. Then to work off some more frustration, I kept sanding and sanding and sanding. Ended up not looking too bad. Made a plastic cutout of the profile from the plans and I was really close. Just need to smooth out a few bumps and I should be good. The router was really under powered (1.5hp) and ended up either burning the wood if I went too slow or shallow or whapping at it if I went too fast or too deep which ended up taking out chunks. I've used actual table routers in the past that didn't do this and this was the first time I used a hand router mounted on a table. It worked fine on some 1 by 1 scrap pine I used to set my depth but wouldn't work as nice on the laminated strips.