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Rather than
to cut a new board for the fence, Beth adds a thin sheet of white coated hardboard to the
existing fence. I had bought a sheet of this inexpensive, plain white panel that is sold
for use as bathroom tub surrounds. It is inexpensive ($20 a 4' X 8' panel) and is useful
for making templates and serves well here.
Beth simply uses some double faced tape to apply it to the old fence.
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She clamps the "new" fence in position.
Note, that she has also used a width of the white hardboard to use as a temporary table
top.
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She raises the router slowly to allow
it to cut an exact "zero-clearance" hole in the sheet that will be the temporary
table top.
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Then, she eases the fence into the spinning
router to cut a fresh "zero clearance" hole for this setup.
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Beth turns the MDF piece around so that
she will have an uncut side to start her new cuts.
This push pad will be the "backer board" to minimize tearout.
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The smaller pieces (4"), that will
be top and bottom, are shaped vertically against the fence. Here, Beth loads two pieces in
the vertical holding jig I created. The small piece of MDF is used to put pressure on the
short pieces from above the jig.
By the way, I have added a new piece of MDF to the left of the fixture. That
new piece will help prevent tearout.
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Now she makes the actual cuts. Her
right hand keeps downward pressure on that piece of MDF, and her left hand keeps pressure
on the jig. We have found that we can minimize tearout by keeping total control on the two
small cherry pieces. Any movement on their part will cause a less than perfect cut.
Beth is also making the cuts in three moves of the fence so that each cut
removes just a small amount.
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And she shows off the final cut. It
looks good.
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All the tops and bottoms are done.
There are 20 pieces needed, and she did a few for spares. Each piece has two ends and each
corner was cut in three passes. So there were a lot of cuts made to this stack, but in
fact the whole process went smoothly and took about 12 minutes.
On to the sides.
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The side pieces were
just that much longer so we felt that this hold-down arrangement would work well and be
faster than using the jig we used for the vertical pieces.
Here, her right hand is controlling the push pad with the MDF base. It serves
to keep the pieces perpendicular against the fence and be a backer board to minimize
tearout. The closer push pad allows her to keep pressure on the side pieces. With the new
"zero clearance" fence and table board, the cuts went smoothly.
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About 10 minutes later, Beth has made
on the cuts to the sides. There was some slight burning but very little tearout.
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And, the moment of truth: Beth's first
locking miter joint looks very good.
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