My new router arrived a little later than I'd hoped, but it's here, and so far it's working out great.
First thing I did to test it out was to check the alignment once I had the bushing in the plunger base.
For those that don't know like me before this, bushings are round metal guides that fit into the center hole on the base plate. They have an extruded smaller metal hole to ride along a template and your bit pokes through that smaller hole.
You also have to account for the offset from the bushing outer edge to the blade with your templates. The part that annoys me is they don't include a centering tool when you buy a router!
You have to order it separate, and I can't get one in the local home improvement stores. So rather than let that stop me once again, I figured out an alternative.
The 1/4" shank on my tiny 1/8" bit is pretty much the perfect size to fit in the hole of the bushing I'm using.
I flipped it upside down and left as much of the shank sticking out as possible to make my own centering pin.
I loosened the screws on the base plate so I can align it. Then I realized I had to lock the plunge base in place before the next step or it would still have too much play.
After locking the base, drop the plunge base onto the bit and move the baseplate accordingly so the bit pokes through the bushing.
That centers the base plate. Then tighten the baseplate screws and its good to go. I let the plunge base extend full again and then I have enough room to remove the bit and flip the bit around.
If I have to unlock the baseplate for any reason, it then must be recentered.
I first did some tests with the scrap piece I initially started on by setting up my rectangle templates to be 1/8th wider than the pattern and started cutting.
This piece already had a bad center cut line and one messed up rectangle from my old router, but the new rectangles came out decent.
That gave me the confidence to attempt to make a template. I saved some pieces from an old TV cabinet we were getting rid of for this purpose.
The back of it was a nice 1/4 thick piece of mdf. However mistakes were still abound. I later discovered I somehow messed up my pattern dimensions.
Here's the finished template.
I decided not to put the center line in the template as I will only need a straight edge for that. Then I decided to test the template out on more scrap wood. Glad I did.
Turns out my offset wasnt quite enough, so my resulting pattern is 1/16th too small.
I also realized after the fact that I need to only make 1/4" deep cuts at a time, and most importantly, vaccuum out the dust in between passes.
Because I didnt vaccuum as I went or in between depth cuts, the dust gathered in the corners of the template and change the shape of it. So as I went deeper with each pass, the corners became more packed with saw dust which prevented me from getting the right shape deeper down.
Once I got all the rectangles cut I wanted to test cut a center line to make sure it would be perfectly aligned.
Here you can see 3 attempts, starting on the right and going left, adjusting after each.
My guess is the first cut was off slightly because of the router tipping ever so slightly.
To fix that, I built up an equal height set of boards on the opposite side of the template and that got me the third cut.
The second was me moving the template further away in hopes of correcting it but that wasn't the issue.
Now with support on both sides, I'm ready to cut the center line. I did this in 3 passes to get all the way through, moving 1/4" deeper each pass.
The result was almost right. Turns out I didn't have everything taped down well enough. When I finished the cut I noticed there was a slight wiggle to the bottom boards.
It started nice and centered but it gets off by about a 1/16th by the other end. I'm gonna think on it a few days and decide if I like the smaller design or if I want to widen it. I'm also debating the center line because while it looks ok, it weakens the board a lot more. It will have some additional strength from laminate and then plexi pressed against the back. Once I decide on those items I'll cut the final pieces, laminate them, and use the template to add the design.
Hopefully I can post some better updates again soon!