Woodwork Routing

The book I read to research this post was Mastering the Router by Ron Fox, which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. A router is a fairly small cylindrical electrical wood cutting tool. The beauty of it is that you can cut any shape you want into a piece of wood. Some people cut intricate designs freehand into a piece of wood but that takes a lot of skill & practise. It's more common to either cut a piece out or attach the router to an arm which is screwed into the wood at one end & attached to the router at the other & a circular shape is cut. You can buy a hone, a routing table, a router & a set of cutters for the equivalent of under £200.00 & you can get decent stuff for that price. A hone is a kind of file which is used for sharpening your cutters & if a cutter is beyond repair you need to throw it away. Cheaper routers use a 1/4 inch shaft for the cutters which is the most common, heavy duty ones use a 1/2 inch or sometimes 8 mm & although they often have adaptors it's best to use a larger size cutter as it provides more power for the cutting. In britain we use a 240v mains voltage so you may have to adjust this information if it's different in your country but their ratings are 400-600 w for light duty, 750-1100 w for medium duty & 1300-2000 w for heavy duty. You should wear goggles when routing & a dust mask is probably a good idea. A lot of routers have an attachment that can be attached to a blower to suck the dust out.