Tricked-out overarm pin router

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reible
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by reible »

BuckeyeDennis wrote:
reible wrote:Finally got around to adding the stop collar and the plastic insert to my OPR today. Works slick!

IMG_2714sc.jpg

Ed
Is that a motorcycle wheel behind your OPR?
Why yes it is. 1976 SX650C taken to a stage 1.5. But with my bad back it may never get back together again by me nor much expectation of my ever riding again........

Ed
{Knight of the Shopsmith} [Hero's don't wear capes, they wear dog tags]
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reible
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by reible »

The Jessem router fence looks so fine on this that I think I'm going to add it to my next years list. When I was in the Woodcraft store they had one set up so I did a little playing and it has a nice feel as well.

Woodcraft wants $230, is that the going rate or should I start shopping or perhaps get lucky with a sale here in the early winter. My tool budgets run Dec to Dec so it is running on fumes for the next short while (2-1/2 months).

I'm also debating with myself if I could do away with another of my router table after the OPR has this fence........ It's the one that I use to keep for travel, which hasn't been happening the last couple of year. I could use the space and I have also been thinking about parting with the one that I have for making wooden rosettes, also something I haven't done in a long while.

But first I need to plan this next years budget.

Ed
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Mike907
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by Mike907 »

This fence from MLCS seems identical to the Jessem, but cheaper. The pictures in the manual are even the same color as the Jessem. Does anyone know if they are the same fence?

http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsite ... nce_anchor

Mike
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

reible wrote:The Jessem router fence looks so fine on this that I think I'm going to add it to my next years list. When I was in the Woodcraft store they had one set up so I did a little playing and it has a nice feel as well.

Woodcraft wants $230, is that the going rate or should I start shopping or perhaps get lucky with a sale here in the early winter. My tool budgets run Dec to Dec so it is running on fumes for the next short while (2-1/2 months).

I'm also debating with myself if I could do away with another of my router table after the OPR has this fence........ It's the one that I use to keep for travel, which hasn't been happening the last couple of year. I could use the space and I have also been thinking about parting with the one that I have for making wooden rosettes, also something I haven't done in a long while.

But first I need to plan this next years budget.

Ed
I paid $240 on Amazon, with "free" prime shipping, so the Woodcraft price certainly sounds competitive.

I've been meaning to post more details on the fence all summer, and it turns out that tonight is a great time. Work is done, high-school daughter's volleyball game is done, the wife is off to Florida for a conference, so tonight I can now do whatever the heck I please! :cool: :cool: :cool:

Jessem MasterFence II review details in the next post.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

For the SS stand-alone OPR, I had originally planned to adapt the fence from my Craftsman-branded router table (which was also sold Bosch-branded). The Craftsman table itself was quite nice. But the fence, while well-featured, but was just too flexible for me. I contemplated various stiffening measures, but eventually decided that it made more sense to buy a good fence than to spend hours stiffening the Craftsman fence. This was even after I had laboriously trued the rather acute fence-face angle to exactly 90 degrees, using a SS disc sander.

I spent a fair amount of time researching aftermarket fences, and ultimately found two that looked like they would fit without modification. One was green, and newly on the market. The other was red, and well-reviewed. The price was not greatly different, so I chose the red (Jessem) fence. Then I suppressed my cheapskate instincts, pulled the full-retail-price trigger, and a couple days later a Jessem Master Fence II appeared on my front porch.

Let’s start the review with the bad. The Jessem packaging was definitely second-rate. Check out the photo below, showing where some Brainiac had decided it would be convenient to throw the nice clear see-through Plexiglas bit guard right into the hardware bag, along with all that hard/sharp-edged stuff. The rest of the packaging wasn’t much better.
My engineering side was rather insulted by this sloppiness, and I was almost annoyed enough to send it back. But the actual shipping damage amounted to a couple of minor nicks and scratches, and I probably wouldn’t have even noticed them if not looking for them. So I decided to let it go.
Parts bag.JPG
Parts bag.JPG (357.02 KiB) Viewed 20202 times
Fortunately, the fence design engineer(s) was very obviously not the same guy(s) that designed the packaging. The fence itself is a thing of beauty. If you have a Shopsmith 520 fence, this will speak to you. The Jessem router fence feels for all the world like a 520 fence. In other words, it is one massive chunk of extruded aluminum, and weighs about the same as the 520 fence. Rigidity is not an issue.
Fence mounted.JPG
Fence mounted.JPG (377.45 KiB) Viewed 20202 times
As for mounting it, basically all you have to do is mount the fore-aft rails underneath the table, as shown below at each each side of the SS OPR table. Quick, easy, and well-designed. Only the force of gravity on the rails is trying to pull those screws out of the table -- the actual fence-clamping force draws the rails up tightly against the underside of the table. The fence simply sits atop the table, clamped in place to the rails with screw knobs & sliding nuts. The rails each have adjustable scales that you can zero where you wish, and use to set fence displacement relative to the router bit. One useful trick I discovered is to loosen the fence-clamp knob on one side only, and then adjust it to twice the incremental fence offset I want. Presto, twice the fence-adjustment resolution, for half the work.
Jessem rails mounted.JPG
Jessem rails mounted.JPG (376.19 KiB) Viewed 20202 times
Under time pressure on a honey-do project, I outsourced flattening, thicknessing, and straight-line edging of my secret-room ceiling paneling boards to a local lumberyard. Some red flags went off when discussing face-jointing for flatness prior to thickness-planing, but I reluctantly ignored them in the interest of time, and in deferring to a pro. Not a good decision. It turns out that the sawmill did NOT have some magical planer that would render the boards both flat and of even thickness. Indeed, their machine was a garden-variety Grizzly thickness planer. So my T&G lumber arrived nicely thicknessed, but not particularly flat. Even after much sorting on my part.

Enter the Jessem fence and Clear-Cut guides (purchased from my local Woodcraft store). I set up the guides to squish the boards flat against the table while milling the T&G. They can, and did, do that. And the fence was plenty stout. But the lovely knurled knobs that lock down the Clear-Cut guides wanted to slip when the humpy-board pressure got too high. Then I noticed that those nice knurled knobs have a hex ID to facilitate clamping down with a Allen key. And then I did so, very carefully, not wanting to damage the fence through gorilla T-nut force.

Well, I got the T&G milled onto those humpy board with near perfection. We’re talking to within 2-4 thousands of perfection here, and they draw up really nice and flat when mated. But my sub-gorilla clamp-knob torquing did deform the T-slot on the fence just ever so slightly. Merely annoying, not a real problem. Later, I bought some T-bolts that will spread the clamping force over a considerably larger area, so I don't expect this to be an on-going issue, even at gorillas torques.

The moral of that story is that if someone ever tries to tell you that rough lumber can be properly milled without face-jointing (or planer-sledding) as a first step, just walk away. I’d be time and money ahead if I had bought an 8” jointer for face-planing, and then thicknessed on my SS Pro Planer, with everything under my own control.

But that nice stout Jessem fence saved the day, and the Crapsman fence would have failed miserably at the squishing-the-boards-flat task.

That's still not all the cool things that Jessem fence can do for you. For example, I had instructed the lumberyard to err on the side of "wide" when straight-line edging the boards, as small defects on the board edges would be milled away when I added the T&G. But in the process of milling the T&G onto all that lumber, I encountered a board or two with un-straightened edge sections that were longer than the Jessem fence. These needed to be jointed before milling the T&G. However, my only working jointer was my dandy-but-small SS jointer, with a bed length not well-suited for jointing 8' boards. Jessem to the rescue, again. The Master Fence II comes with a pair of precision extruded rails that can be set to offset one fence face by either 1/16" or 1/32", IIRC. So I popped those in, re-jointed the board edges in question, and got nice straight flat edges. After milling the T&G, they mated up perfectly with the other boards.

Bonus #2: the Jessem fence quickly slides back or dismounts entirely for using overam router functions, such as making cool butterfly inlays.
Opr Pattern Jig 1.jpg
Opr Pattern Jig 1.jpg (426.63 KiB) Viewed 20202 times
OPR Pattern Jig.JPG
OPR Pattern Jig.JPG (414.02 KiB) Viewed 20202 times
So overall, I highly recommend the Jessem fence. It’s a huge upgrade over the stock SS stand-alone OPR fence extrusions, and it helps turn the machine into a first-class conventional router table.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

Mike907 wrote:This fence from MLCS seems identical to the Jessem, but cheaper. The pictures in the manual are even the same color as the Jessem. Does anyone know if they are the same fence?

http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsite ... nce_anchor

Mike
I can't say for sure, Mike, but in the pictures it sure looks like the same fence.
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reible
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by reible »

When I placed an order for a few things I still need $10 to get to free shipping so since this had caught my eye some months earlier and it was on sale now for $10.97..... well I got it mounted today. Not a big deal but it gives me a place to set a couple of things up off the table and still at hand. What is is? It is a drill press tool holder. I got it here:

http://www.infinitytools.com/tool-holder

And this is how it is mounted on my machine:
IMG_2870rzbc.jpg
IMG_2870rzbc.jpg (104.17 KiB) Viewed 20088 times
The tray pulls off as does the arm if it gets in the way or if you want it it on the left rather then the right side. Screw driver takes it on and off it you are so inclined. The tray swivels and turns so it seems pretty versatile.

The other thing I have wanted to do is to add some shelves below the unit. This is some plywood I had cut to fit...... well it didn't fit when the time came to mount it. The whole base is out of square, I guess I should have guessed that as it was a pain when I put it together. I was using my guided saw so making it fit was a snap. Now I'd like to find a tool box or perhaps make a shelf unit to fit on the lower shelf to store attachments in. That might be a next year project if I have to make something.

The lower shelf on mine needed to be up about 3/4" off the bottom lower brace to accommodate the caster pedals. If you decide to do something like this make sure you check to see the fit on yours. No use having casters if you can't use them.
IMG_2871sc.jpg
IMG_2871sc.jpg (104.79 KiB) Viewed 20088 times
No plans for the top shelf yet. Could store a few things there but they need to be out of the way of the bottom router and its adjustments. Maybe two narrow drawers one on each side?

Few too many projects for the day so I didn't much time to measure what space is left, maybe later in the week if time permits. Like to make use of the space and organize some of the OPR items for easy access.

Ed
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Sherlock
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by Sherlock »

Pin Router Question: As I see one for sale locally and they look interesting having watched Nick's Online Videos. Were there a couple of designs? Nick's attached to the Shopsmith and used the SS table. And could be used with the router in the horizontal position. The "Tricked-out" and the one for sale look to be standalone. Not a bad thing but comes with room vs. use decision. Also can the standalone version do the horizontal router mount? Back to Nick's videos, looked like a nice feature.
Thanks, Jeff
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reible
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by reible »

Shopsmith had an older machine which is the one pictured above. You can see my collection of pictures of that design here:

http://s589.photobucket.com/user/reible ... t=4&page=1

There are two pages and clicking on them gives you larger images.

That design has some pluses in that you can have a below and an above router. The "pin" can be in either place by by way of the top router holding a "pin". It fell out of production and the only way you can get one now is used. Some parts are pretty hard to find while others can be order from shopsmith yet.

The top router arm is pretty much the same on the new version. You are limited as to the same size router and so on. Since the new version mounts on the shopsmith it can be either vertical or horizontal, the old version can not do that. I'm not sure which function you liked on the new one but if you give me details I'll better be able to tell you if that function can be done on the old table due to its above and below design.

The new version is not currently available so finding one used is your only option as of now for getting either one.

Ed
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Sherlock
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Re: Tricked-out overarm pin router

Post by Sherlock »

Thanks for the information Ed. And the pictures. Actually the space is more of an issue for me. The footprint of another standalone tool. I'm kind of if-a-pocket-screw-will-work then use the pocket screw. Advanced joinery, not so much. Above my skill level at this point. Jeff
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