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Routing a chamfered patch

Posted: Sat April 24th, 2010, 7:18 pm
by Athaena
Hi All,

When I was getting some work done on Athaena, the chap who did the repairs on her hull appears to have routed out the area that needed replacing with a chamfered edge (hard to see in the photo).

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He's then routed a replacement piece from new ply to exactly fit into the area he had previously cut out. The piece fitting in has an exact reciprocal chamfer.

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You can see from the image below he's got a very tight exact fit.

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Well I was very curious as to how he did this and I was also wanting to know the technique for future reference. After much head scratching and asking around I have a solution. I thought I'd share it here in case it's of use to others. So, here's one way of doing it....

1. Buy a suitably sized v-groove / chamfer cutter for the thickness of wood you need to cut through. And a bearing slightly larger than the diameter of your cutter.

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2. Cut a template a little larger than the area you need to replace. The template doesn't need to be perfect but keeping the shape simple will help. I've deliberately made mine a bit irregular and wavey. Fasten the template to the wood to be patched.

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3. Using a guide that has a diameter equal to the diameter of your bearing plus the diameter of your cutter. In my case 29mm bearing plus 26mm cutter = 55mm guide. (I cut my own from some transparent plastic. I cut it smaller at 54mm to allow for some glue in the joint. As it turns out that this wasn't necessary and left me with a gap a little wider than I would prefer, so I need to make another guide!) With your guide in place rout out the wood to be replaced following the template.

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4. Flip your template and fasten it to the replacement timber. Remove the large guide from your router and replace the cutter with the bearing fitted. Rout round the template again cutting your replacement piece.

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5. Your infill piece should drop snugly into the hole. My gap is a little larger than I would prefer which serves me right for making my plastic guide too small. I'm also using very cheap poor quality plywood for practising.

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I reckon a little more practice and I'll be ready to go for real. Once you have your cutter and spacer set sorted out, the process is very quick and very very simple. Cut the template, cut the hole, flip the template, cut the infill.

Chris

Re: Routing a chamfered patch

Posted: Sat November 13th, 2010, 11:17 am
by Eventide Owners Group
Great tip Chris, Can I put this on the main site as well?

john