DIY Project – Upcycling Our Kitchen Cabinet Doors – Phase 2 – The Router
Hoping to have better success with this phase of the kitchen cabinet doors and drawers, I got a head start building the door frames on the next five doors and three drawers. Waiting for the newly formulated stain so I could finish up on the desk cabinet and drawers, I had all the door frames cut and assembled for this phase. Routing of the frames and drawer fronts was next.
I had past issues with trying to route out a 3/8” rabbet with one pass, I had success with making two passes to get the depth of the rabbet for the edges of the doors and the inside for the panels. I started with my first pass and I was getting splintering of the stiles. I changed out the router bit before I started my second pass. However, the problem continued. The rabbets looked terrible. I did not notice the splintering at first, but after 2 doors I checked the rabbets. The splintering was not severe, but bad enough that the edges were not clean. Sanding would not fix these edges. I stopped routing.
I noticed that the router was making different sounds and bogging down as I was making cuts. At first, I attributed it to a dull router bit. Supposedly I sharpened the bits. The bits looked and felt sharp. Maybe I should not rule out the bit. So, I went out and bought a third one.
With a coupon in hand to save some money, I went to a local hardware store to get a new bit. Even though I checked online, and the bit was not available, I went there anyways. Their website was correct. They did not have that bit. As I talked to the sales associate, he mentioned that I might need a better router. I had a problem understanding why the router was the issue since I already completed doors and drawers for four rooms.
I traveled to the home improvement store that I knew the bit was in stock and purchased it. I returned home. I installed the new bit and started on another door. Initially, I thought I had the problem solved. I stopped and looked at the cut. Nope! The splintering was still there. Well at least I could rule out the router bit. But now I needed to buy a new router.
My Sears-Craftman® router is over 40 years old. The router is described as “vintage,” by those trying to sell it online. It was not used often. However, I used it for plenty of DIY projects. When I used the router, it got a workout. So maybe it was going bad. When I first started working on the cabinet doors, I did not have any problems with routing 3/8” deep rabbets with one pass. Halfway through this project, I needed to do two passes. I sharpened the bit without success. I used new bits twice. Time to shop for a new router.
Buying a new router was short and easy. I searched the Internet and found several routers that had more horsepower and more RPM’s. These routers were not the best, but better than the one I was using. I was willing to spend about $200. I found a 2.25 hp Bosch® router for $170.00. Efiwym, who is always looking for a good deal, gave me a flyer from a local hardware store with a $10 off coupon for your first online order. The store had this exact router, and it was less expensive than other stores. I started the buying process: (1) register online, (2) apply coupon, (3) buy router, (4) wait for router.
The router was delivered just in time for me to start the re-routing. The timing could not have been better. After reading the instructions, I switched out the router bit from my “vintage” router. The Bosch® router did not have a switch at the handle, which made it difficult at first. It had this great depth adjustment feature that was really accurate. Fine tuning and resetting the depth went quickly. The new router finished up the cuts in no time.
Since the wood edges were already splintered, the router bit just picked up the raised edges of the splinters and tore them away. I was not getting any clean cuts. One stile had such bad splintering that I had no choice to replace it.
I had accidentally created an extra set of stiles. These were the right length. So, I replaced the stile. I remembered not to use the existing torqued Kreg® screws. The head of the screws would just break off as I tried to finish screwing down the joint. After the new stile was replaced, I routed the inside and outside edges of the stile. Routing was done on the door frames, finally.