New Product - "CMT 3D Router Carver System™"

Beth has brought her new little pet, "Mugsy" to the shop. I  am not used to such a small dog. Once he had sniffed all the corners, he was happy to stay in his little carry-all.
	Beth starts the day by setting up the CMT router table with a straight cutting bit that she will use for edge jointing boards to be glued up for the cheese/crackers trays. The router raiser does a great job at setting the height of the big Porter Cable router.
We have a great CMT fence that we will be using later, but right now, it is very easy to clamp this "quick" fence in place. The arrow points to the outfeed side which we have added one layer of edge banding to. Then, Beth sets the fence so that the cutter is in alignment with the outfeed side.    By the way, I made this fence set-up several weeks ago to make use of the Stots Dust Sucker (see www.woodshopdemos.com/nprod-18.htm). It certainly doesn't replace the full CMT fence setup but is handy to pop on and off for this type use. The dust port works rather well.
	A Mugsy update: we put him and his carry-all up on the table saw outfeed. His floor position was right next to the vacuum that serves the router table — don't want to frighten the poor pup.
Beth makes a sample run on a test piece of 5/4 Lyptus. By the way, we have 5/4 not because we need the extra thickness, but that it was the only thickness available — and at the 4/4 price. We will run it through the thickness planer once the boards are glued up.    The arrow is directed at the white edge banding of the outfeed portion of the fence. When the fence is set correctly, that much thickness is removed with each pass of the workpiece.
	One or two passes on each edge and the jointing is perfect. When I say "one or two" I really mean to take as many passes as you need to. The best way to know when you have done enough is to go by sound. When the cutter does not make cutting noise the whole length, take another pass. Remember, we have the outfeed set so that each pass represents the thickness of the white melamine edge tape — about 1/32". We are not taking away major wood here.
With the jointed edges being so good, we could just glue them up right now. But for curiosity sakes, I suggested to Beth that we should try using the CMT reverse glue joint on our nice new edges.
	Beth has marked her setup board with marks indicating the center section. Her pencil is pointing to the 1/2-way position of the bit. She will use our "A" — "B" method of making a test cut. It is simple. Mark the one board "A" and run it with face up. The "B" board is run face down.
	Beth makes a pass with the reverse glue bit set. Note the slight space between the wood and the fence. That isn't the fence set too far back. It is the result of Beth taking light passes. We have learned some time ago, that this bit, the tongue and groove bit and the finger joint bit have to remove a lot of wood before they will mate with their opposite profile. We set the fence to its final position but ease up on the cut, making several passes until we can hear no wood being cut. By the way, some woods have more spring back than others. I think the Lyptus fits into that category and requires more "cleanup" passes.
Beth points to the result of the first setup run of this bit. It is off by about 1/16". The "A" is lower than the mating piece. She simply makes a height adjustment of one half that (1/32" or  1/2 a turn of the router raiser crank) and makes the 2nd cut.
	Here is the final joint. I have separated it a wee bit so that you can see the shape and that the height adjustment is right on.
This reverse glue joint has a great amount of surface for gluing, so Beth applies the glue liberally. The board she is working on is about 32" long and will give us two cheese/cracker trays. It is a nice length to work on. When the glue sets, we will run them through the planer and bring them down to a final thickness of about 3/4" or a wee bit less. We want the board to have a light weight feel, but we have to rout out sections for crackers and the tile so we don't want to go too thin.    That is where we will take up next time. Christmas is looking very near, and we have quite a bit to do.