The Pedal Gee Bee

Time spent: 2 hours

I figured out how to get the nose ring down to size to fit my drill press last night. Using the circle jig and the already centered hole in the aft side, I can circle route the outer ring sections down to their final dimension. Since I won’t be able to reach all the way to the front edge with my router bit, I can route what’s left using a flush cut bit in my router table. This will give me just enough clearance to turn the ring in the drill press and sand to the shape needed.

Routing the outer rings was going to be difficult since their circular shape meant I would be routing a lot of end grain. With hardwood, this isn’t much of a problem. However, this is pine and unless you have a sharp bit and take very shallow routes, you could very well tear the wood along the grain and take a huge chunk out by accident. Make sure you clamp this thing down VERY securely. If you don’t, the router is going to grab, jerking the piece away from your hands and tearing the wood badly.

I took my time, and only took about an 1/16^th of an inch out for each pass. Even then, I managed to tear a bit of the ring. I’m glad I used urethane glue to build the layers. I wasn’t worried about a whole ring section tearing out. After I had the aft portion of the pine rings routed to size, I mounted the router in the table and flush trimmed the rest of the ring to shape.