Drawer Lock Bit

[Signal]

Hi all

thanks charley for the how to on the drawer lock bit.

Went to use mine yesterday and having never seen the joint before
and there being no details with the bit I gave up.

Found your how to this morning and set off the the workshop with
a copy in my hands.

After my first drawer, made 4 in all, I realised doing the veritcal passes was a bit dodgy with the low fence on the router table.

So I fixed a piece of ply to the front of the fence and very very very slowly drove it into the tool, probably took me about 5 minutes as I know this is quite a dangerous procedure.. It all went fine and the tool and router didnt complain at all.

Any way up shot is with the higer fence I felt much safer running the vertical passes. and they subsuquent joints where much nicer.

I did however have quite a lot of fuzzies along the edges, was I running the timber through too fast?



Cheers

Signal

 

[Charley]

HI Signal,

I'm glad the guide helped

A slower feedrate will help with the tear out but also making a 'zero-clearance' fence front will make a difference.

To make one just screw a new bit of plywood/MDF to your fence, insert the drawer lock bit, set the fence behind the bit (so it's not touching) then finally with you behind the router table turn it on and slowly push the fence forward through the bit..

Merry Christmas, (d)

 

[Signal]

Charley,

thanks for the reply, i made a zero clearance fence after the first
drawer but the tear out was still evident so i suppose ill just have to
take things a bit slower. It wasnt a great problem, just ran a sharp
craft knife up the edge to remove the strands but I would of liked
to have not done this..

One thing that did make me think, when I took the auxilary fence of
it of course had a perfect match of the bit run through the board.

Now I am thinking if I run a suitably wide piece of stock through the
bit on both sides I will have a nice matching piece to sit in that hole..
Kind of like a weird dove tail joint.

Apart from sliding dividers in a cd case I can think of any other use for it
but it might be intereseting.

One think I forgot to mention which really annoyed me was while doing a dry fit some of the joints where very tight, to the point that I broke one of the tounges off :x

After that on those that where tight I just ran the block pane along one of the mating edges a couple of times and it eased the joint just enought to advoid breaking another tongue. Dont know why it should of been so tight but hey, I found a soloution.

Have a great christmas Charley

Signal