router table shaping

General Discussion
1

Ive just completed my first board 6’4" x 18 1/2 x 2 1/4 using a router table with deck and rocker jig templates,I have shaped many boards before using more traditional methods

Using the router table I found that I could get exactly the board that I had designed

with out the usual mistakes that allways seem to eat up a little foam and make the board a compromise

For this board I only had a little concave fwd and the rest flat on the bottom, this meant that I went from router to final sand in one small step

The deck I thicknessed and leveled first using the router table and jig then rolled the board over and did the outline, once again using the router and template

Then all that was left was to roll shape the deck and do the rails

The method seems to be very quick and acurate, has any one else out there tried this

I would like to trade notes on pitfalls plus and the like

2

I like it; a manual CNC machine right?

Do you have pictures of the process or even just how you placed the blank and template up with the table. This might be the answer to the poor man’s cnc.

Can’t wait to hear if anyone else has tried and what thier experience was.

–4est

3

Yep the poor mans cnc right

I didnt take any phos of the last board,but I am just about to start the next so I will document with photos

It would be great if I could come up with a system for doing the deck roll and the rails

Moving jigs in 3D is a little brain racking

4

someone had plans on their site, just can’t find the link anymore

5

you are on to something. keep us posted. thx

6

Sabs,

I built a router table set up from plans KR has on his site. Made mine from heavy timber and angle steel so it can be easily pulled apart and reasembled (don’t have much space) Check KR’s site:

http://groups.msn.com/MyKRSurf/profiler.msnw for the full story.

The principle is simple but KR’s nutted out the dimensions and come up with some brilliant features that make the whole thing very usable - love the quickgrips, height adjustment system and the deck roll system.

I think it’s the way to go - you can get the rocker and foil perfect really quickly (although you spend a lot of time getting your curves set up)

Few problems I had were - My router base must be a bit smaller than KR’s so the bridges are a bit wide.

Also the router bit I got was too short so I couldn’t get enough plunge depth for the bottom of the bridge to clear the nose flip in the blank (had to mow it down with the planner). Due to lack of plange I had to plan about 10 mil off the deck roll guides. This made it difficult to get the amount of roll I was after. I had to take the router right to the end of the roll guides - BIG MISTAKE - as I was doing a pass my vacumm hose snagged and the router fell through and put a perfectly round hole in the rail. Also went a bit too quick and the router tore the foam a - could be wrong bit?

Made curves by transfering measurements from computer to mdf and screwing down a long piece of ceder to act as a guide for ball cutter. Kept breaking the ceder on the deck curve so changed to Tasmanian Myrtle (used for making longbows) Still looking for a better material.

Again check KR’s site he has very generously shared the results of a lot of development work.

Cheers

7

i had something similar to that ,back when i was building mainly polyester boards…

after it was profiled i placed a full length outline template made from 3 mm mdf on the bottom and used 2 small screws into the stringer ,one screw under the tail fin and the other screw where you would place your logo near nose,so the screw holes werent seen in the finished board …

i had two routers set up with the right bit in each one ,so i didnt have to change bits ,the first router had a long standard looking bit about 6mm diameter ,one pass with that and the outline was done ,sometimes it wouldnt get all the way through ,but you could just snap off the rail off cut quite easy…

the next step was move the template only at the tail ,with a second hole in my template i would move the tail section of the template over to the rail about 12mm closer,then i would do a pass with my second router this time it had one of those blades that make a 12mm round corner ,when you started your cut at the tail it wouldnt touch the board because i moved the template over 12mm ,then as you moved towards the nose it started to cut deeper and deeper until it was a full 12mm round near nose …

your outline and bottom edge shape was done ,the only thing left was round off deck section of rail and tweak the bottom edge a little ,coz it was a bit to tucked around 1/3 from the tail,

that sort of stuff works well if youve got heaps of the same boards to do ,plus you can get good results with a 16 year old helping out ,doing the machining and following the procedure…it left me to fine tune …

i had this really long shaping bay it was 2 end to end ,so while i was at one end i could keep an eye on what was happening at the other …

maybe some of that stuff may help…

regards

BERT

8

Pinhead and Bert

Thanks for the input the web site is good its great to see how others are solving issues and those niffty little ideas that make it all happen \

I will keep posting as i do this next board and include photos

cheers