Re: Home made router edge guide

[Cherryville Chuck]

I needed a couple of edge guides to fit my DW 611 and they are easy to make so I finally got at it so I could do a job with them. Whenever I rout a groove in a board freehand I like to sandwich the board between two edge guides and I don't have to worry about the router wandering if it hits bad grain. You can easily make one in about a half hour or so. The idea is simple, I either drill holes in a piece of wood and then split it in half through the holes or I take two halves and clamp them together and drill down the split. If the rods you need are metric (and assuming you don't have metric drill bits) then the best plan is to drill slightly larger holes and then split the piece by sawing through the center of the holes (more or less). The two halves then get clamped together using machine screws and T nuts.

If you drill between already split pieces it's a good idea to sand the mating surfaces a bit or take a thin shave off on a jointer to make sure they clamp tightly on the rods. If you slice the board after drilling then it's not an issue. The DW 611 takes a 5/16" rod and the bolts to secure them are 6mm by 1mm thread and are not included with the router.

I marked one side of the guide out and extended the marks around to the edge and then clamped the pieces together and screwed them for added measure to make sure they stayed put while drilling the rod holes. Later the screws came out and I redrilled the screw holes for machine screws and T nuts. Once the clamp bar was finished I added an extension so I could guide against something narrow. I cut a clearance hole out of two pieces at once to keep it easy. The 611 can only handle just over a 1" bit so I drilled a 1 1/4" semi circle in each side. The pictures tell the rest of the story.

[Stick486]

nicely done Charles...