3/4" Bench Dog Hole Router Template Reviews

3 Rating 1 Reviews

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Phone:

800-535-4486

Location:

1177 Rosemar Rd,
Parkersburg
West Virginia
26105

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“A potential option if you have a lot of time and not as much money. You will likely still have to buy a bushing set and a different router bit. I ran into a couple of issues that made this very time consuming to use. 1. One of the locking dogs got a burr in between the red aluminum part and the knurl screw so it wouldn't tighten. I sanded it out with some high grit sandpaper and added a good amount of paste wax to both dogs and they worked much better. (tightening and loosening those knurl bolts tears up your fingers pretty quick.) 2. Dust kept getting between the bushing and the template, so on every hole I had to stop and vacuum out the dust to get a true hole size. I think it would have been better to use a 3/4" template with bearing follower bits. That way regular bench dogs could be used as well. The process I ended up using was to clamp the template down (you will definitely want to clamp it as much as possible), drill a 3/8" hole in the center to help remove some material, plunge with a spiral DOWNcut bit into the drilled hole and do one pass, pull the router out and vacuum out the dust stuck in the template and clean off the bushing, then do a final pass to get the correct dimension. I did 144 holes (not a full 4x8) and it probably took 4 hours of work, plus having to go get a different bit that I didn't have and wasn't in stock at my local store at the time. I haven't rigged up a system to check accurately, but it looks like my hole pattern cumulatively lost 1/8" across the length of the bench, measured with a tape. It will work for basic clamping, but I will have to check if it is square enough for assembly work. Looks a lot better than the jig from the competing woodworking store, but paying a local CNC shop or buying the orange $250 drill-bit style jig is probably the way to go if you want a precise pattern and don't want to spend so much time. Or if you can make your own larger laser cut template that doesn't require repositioning so many times. I only did a 3/4" thick top, but I don't think this would be a good option if you were trying to do a 3-4" thick top.”

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Posted 2 months ago