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Bandcamp
Just make sure you wear your safety gear and, as an old woodworker I once knew told me “The rule about Power Tools (and life in general) is never put your fingers anywhere you wouldn’t put your knob...”
(formerly miserneil)
Have fun, a router is a great (but scary) tool!
Bandcamp
A good place to get the cutters from is Wealden Tools. Good price, selection and rapid delivery when ordered online. Cant fault them,
Adam
they will be naff(ish) but its good to get a range of them & get used to shaping/bevels/roundovers etc
(tbf I use my cheap trend brand 45• bevel thing all the time & it's still decent after 4 years/14 builds)
I'd get a flush trimmer bit too if you can & make (not buy, yet) some simple MDF templates to get used to the various ways of using one
good luck , building gets addictive.. I can use my router to pretty much complete a rough body in a couple of hours.
Bandcamp
For pickup cavities you will need “top bearing” router bits. The bearing runs around the inside of the template, and the bit cuts the wood below. You’ll need bits of several different lengths to cope with different depths of cavity. The router can only plunge so far before the bearing leaves the template. The bearing is a “flush” bearing, ie it’s the same diameter as the blade.
For rounding the edges of a speaker cabinet you’ll want “bottom bearing round over bits”. Probably two different sizes to cope with the larger radius on the outside of the cabinet edge, and the smaller radius on the inside. You can get cheap roundover bits from B&Q, Screwfix etc because they’re used for installing kitchens. Both companies seem to have stopped doing top bearing bits. I bought my last couple online, possibly from Wealden, possibly direct from Triton.
If you’re binding the edge of a guitar then you need a bearing which has a smaller diameter than the cutter. The difference being the thickness of the binding. For that type of precision I’d use Wealden.
Just another note - whilst having top-bearing straight cutters of various depths is handy, it may not be absolutely necessary. The reason being that if routing a cavity and the cutter bearing drops below the template, you can simply remove the template and use the already-routed part of the cavity as the new 'template'. Easier to do/show than explain, but it is dependent on the depth of cavity/plunge depth of router/cutter length.
Another helpful tip is to use a forstner bit (if you have one) or large diameter drill to remove waste prior to finishing off with the router. This saves time/cutter sharpness/router motor wear(to a small extent).
Adam
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