I'd always planned to do a bit of show-and-tell on using my OPR to do butterfly inlays, per Reible's suggestion for my secret-room paneling-board split problems. You new OPR guys have now given me a bit more motivation. Plus, I have to sit up late tonight anyway, smoking pork for a big football party tomorrow (Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers). So what better time?
I think that I've already posted this photo on a different thread, but it's a really good example of what you can do with the OPR. This was just a test, in a piece of scrap wood. But it came out so nice, I might just incorporate it into a real project someday.
- Butterfly inlay test.JPG (935.02 KiB) Viewed 33498 times
I cut a couple of butterfly patterns, sized and shaped to my liking, on my SS bandsaw, and then dressed the edges with the drum sander. But the template, the actual inlay, and the inlay pocket were all milled on my OPR.
To get to the point where I could do that, I first had to design and build a guide jig, shown below.
- Jig with blank.JPG (643.72 KiB) Viewed 33498 times
I cut the T-slots in the jig base with a T-slot router bit, and bought the miniature toggle clamps from Amazon. The combination works great. The "fence" boards capture the workpiece side to side, and the toggle clamps lock it down tight. I like the fence boards for most work. But if you have different workholding requirements, you can use most any type of hold-down.
And here are some milled butterfly inlays, ready to be resawn free of the workpiece.
- Routed test inlays.JPG (594.86 KiB) Viewed 33495 times
In the photo below, I'm using Rockler mini hold-down clamps to fix the workpiece on a diagonal.
- Jig with Rockler clamps.JPG (701.22 KiB) Viewed 33498 times
On the underside of the base board, hidden by the bottom perimeter frame, is a large recess for mounting patterns and templates. I had designed provisions for fastening those in place with screws, but wound up just sticking them in place with double-sided tape. Which worked just fine. For those who aren't familiar with overarm routers, there's a pin sticking up from the router table, beneath the jig, and directly on axis with the overarm router bit. It rides against the perimeter of the template or pattern affixed to the underside of the jig, and the overarm router then mills a precise copy of the pattern into the workpiece atop the jig.
I also found the standard SS OPR dust port to be almost impossible to use, in practice. So I temporarily rigged the hose and adapter as shown in the photos. That worked much better, but I still had to be careful not to snag the adapter snout on the clamps and such. I have some ideas for a better design, but that's future project.