Day 19 - Much routing (and a touch of fender)

(Originally posted on August 10th, 2013)

I'm exhausted!  I think I spent an eight hour day in the garage today.

I checked up on the top fender slats I put on yesterday, and they were nice and solidly attached.  I finished up with the other side, but I had to re-cut the back panel (number 6) since it was about 5mm too small.  Not precise to the dimensions in the plans, but I'm closer than I thought I'd be!

While that was drying, I was antsy to do more.  I decided to try routing the 45° chamfer on the semi-circle experiment I cut out yesterday, for practice.  It worked very well!  There were some rough spots, but I practiced using the orbital sander on it to smooth them out.  This reduced the thickness of the un-chamfered 5mm part, but a quick sanding over even that restored the desired thickness.  I was ready to cut me some rings!

Oh, forgot to mention: I decided to modify my router jig a bit, sandwiching the HDF jig between the router and the plastic mounting plate.  This took care of the screw head problems, and made the router slide along the plywood and MDF much more smoothly.  At the other end of the jig—to compensate for the thickness of the plate—I simply used another piece of HDF underneath with a hole drilled through it.  The result: smooth, round, perfect cuts.

That is, until the bit broke while I was cutting the shoulder top.  I wasn't even going that fast, nor cutting too deep!

Swearing mildly under my breath, I unscrewed the jig from the plywood, took the broken bit shaft out of the router, and headed to Lowe's.  I got a replacement 1/4" bit (they didn't carry carbide bits, darn it) and took it home.  I secured the new bit and continued cutting.  One wouldn't even notice there were two separate cuts!  Shoulder top complete.

I got the courage to try getting the neck rings done.  I marked the various shapes out on my 3/4" MDF, bisected them into eights so that I knew were the neck struts would eventually be placed, and began to cut, about 1/4" at a time.  Took about 3 passes each ring.

Before cutting out the inner circle, I took several passes with the chamfered bit.  I tried the full depth of the chamfer bit all in one go at first, but I gouged the heck out of the ring.  Luckily, it was salvageable with a second and third pass.  Then I started in on the inner circles to complete the rings.  (Please note: the router is NOT on in this pic!)

After several years passed, I was finally done!

I was also caked with MDF dust, as well as the entirety of my garage.  I'm glad I was wearing a mask the whole time.  Spider webs are very beautiful with a coating of MDF dust ...

Thank goodness for the shop vac!  I spent about two hours vacuuming the heck out of every nook and cranny I could find, and then I took a very long shower!

Tomorrow, I'll start attaching the bottom fender panels (and probably buy a few more clamps while I'm at it), and perhaps soak some HDF for the shoulders.  I've secretly been looking forward to that.  Ooh, I'll need even more clamps, then ... I wonder if belt clamps would be a good solution for holding the wet HDF in place across the shoulders.





Tools:
1 - 1/4" x 1" straight router bit: $14.58

Grand total: $886.78