A technique often used on Bob Oram boats to minimise build time and maximise build strength is to rout roundover edges in place of strip-planking. For example, the curved transition between the deck and sides of Binary will be achieved by running a 38mm roundover router bit along the entire length on both sides. This 38mm radius will be repeated throughout the boat.
Today we decided that a short and simple Saturday afternoon job would be to create the first of these routed edges on the corner of our rear cockpit seats.
Tom had purchased the 38mm bit as a special order many months ago. With the Duflex panels set up ready to go, we broke the bit out of it’s packaging and went to fit it in the Makita 3612. There was a problem. The diameter of the bit was larger than the opening on the base plate of the router.
Some quick googling indicated that a substitute base plate with a > 76mm opening to suit the Makita would be difficult to acquire. Not really expecting it to be fruitful, I suggested to Tom a trip to Bunnings. I was very pleased to find they had a $120 Ryobi router with an opening of 78mm – once Tom removed the three screw lugs that intruded into the opening. This meant sacrificing the option of using a template guide.
Below shows that some further grinding was needed to provide sufficient clearance:
After messing around for about three hours with the googling, Bunnings trip, cutting and grinding to get the right sized opening to take the bit, the rest was the short and simple one hour Saturday afternoon job we had hoped for.
And if you have scrolled down this far, you might even want to look at the video of the routing ;). It’s recommended you turn down your speaker volume for this….
The Scrumble Project 