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new router for electric guitar

2K views 8 replies 8 participants last post by  danconway327 
#1 ·
Hi,
This is my introduction....I have used a small 1 hp router in the past, mainly for rounding off corners on shelves etc., and it's one of my favorite tools.

I recently started building an electric guitar, and I just purchased the Freud FT3000E plunge router. Seems like a solid machine, with variable speed, and soft start. I tested it out, and it's actually fairly quiet, and with some high-quality carbide bits, it is very smooth and easy to use.

I also purchased a Bosch RA1171 cabinet-style benchtop router table. This I have some gripes about. First of all, the holes didn't fit my router plate. So I immediately voided the warranty and drilled my own, and now it fits fine (though I had to remove one of the plunge handles for it to fit inside the cabinet).

Second gripe - the router table plate is mounted with threaded inserts, which are supposed to be used to adjust the height of the plate to make it flush with the table. Right away they stripped the particle board or whatever the cabinet is made of. It's a really bad design - the screws that mount the plate go right into the threaded inserts, and by tightening them, you invariably turn the inserts, thereby lowering the plate! I put a bunch of wood glue in the insert hole after leveling the plate; we'll see if that stays or not after I screw the plate on.

I will probably modify the cabinet, making it a little bigger (must be designed for smaller routers). The table top seems sufficient for my first project. The fence seems fine, and comes with 1/16" inserts for jointing (which will be the first thing I'll do on it).

For my electric guitar, I have a custom-built neck, which will extend to the back of the body (neck-through design), and the sides will be glued to that (after jointing). Then I will glue a top sheet of 1/2" flamed redwood (that I found in a creek!). I will also use the router to round off the edges on the back (the top will be hand-carved), and to route the control and pickup cavities, hollow sections (for weight reduction), and wiring channels.

I'm looking forward to getting started with the new router!
 
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#4 ·
Greetings Kevin and welcome to the router forum good to have you aboard.
 
#5 ·
Hello Kevin! Welcome to the router forum. I must confess that i am not familiar with your products, so it is hard to comment. Was the router plate built to match your table? It sounds that you were not the one that attached every thing. It is likely that modifications had to be made to match your products, however, the MDF should not have been damaged. The glue will probably hold. Could have you held the height adjustor's while turning the threads? These questions i am asking just out of curiosity and hindsight is always better than foresight. The damaged mount ares might be better fixed with epoxy, and i hope all is downhill from here. We have all had problems along the way, and I am sure that some one with much more knowledge will be along.
 
#6 ·
Managed to get the plate leveled using shims. Some epoxy in the inserts would probably be more permanent. I'll probably make my own plate (a friend can machine it) eventually, along with my own system for leveling it.
On a more positive note, I set up the fence with a 1/16" shim for jointing, and after practicing on some scrap wood, I got some very clean joints. This was on a piece of 1" thick dense old-growth birch (reclaimed from Lake Superior) with 1/8" of purpleheart glued onto it.
I also rigged up dust collection with my shop-vac, and I'm amazed at how well it worked. I bought an extra length of 2 1/2" hose, and a 3" Y pipe splitter (which the flexy hose fit right into), so now I have hose coming out of the cabinet and the router fence hood, into the shop vac (which has a drywall filter bag and an Ultra-Web filter). NO dust at all escaped!
 
#9 ·
Make sure you post some pictures of your guitar project, I am midway through a Partsocaster builup myself, but saving up some coinage as I need a new router, mine spit out some bearings and small plastic pieces recently and I dont feel to comfortable using it again. Especiallly after seeing the pictures on here of the damage a router can do to your fingers {and anything else that gets in the way}.
 
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