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Well,
I was lucky to be able to get such good joints with the locking miter bit in my shop
cabinet project. Since then, I have been doing a lot of corners and trying to find a
simple way to set the bit height and the fence so that perfect joints are easy to
get...and not just luck.
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What I wanted to do is to use this strong, attractive joint on small decorative boxes. I cut sides of maple and ends of walnut—mainly to give contrast for the sake of this demonstration. |
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Rather than tell you of all the
earlier attempts, I will jump right to the final method—one that, in fact, will allow
you to set your bit height and fence depth for any thickness stock you wish to use.
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I mark the center on the end of
"A".
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This is the next step: adjusting the router bit height so that the center point of the bit is at the center of the stock (see inset). |
Next, I adjust the fence so that it holds the work piece at the 1/2 mark. This is hard to set since the mid-point of the bit isn't marked (see inset). Since this is a test setup only, you need only get close. |
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I make the first test cut with BOTH pieces flat on the table. The "A" piece I route with the "A" mark up and the "B" piece, I route with the "B" mark down, flat on the table. |
Now I dry-fit the two pieces to see how great a discrepancy there is. If the "A" piece is high, as in this case, the router bit should be raised by 1/2 the discrepancy error. |
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Two tests later, I have the perfect
fit. You can see that My "A" and "B" markings are getting chopped.
That is simply a matter of me cutting off the earlier tests and trying again with the same
pieces.
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