After thinking more about how I would create the vents in the sides of the cabinet I came up with an idea for a jig that might make it easier.
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| Venting Jig Design |
The idea was to have the project piece sit between two boards with several evenly-spaced slots and a cross member that fits into each set of slots. The left and right sides can then act as stopping points and the top as a guide for the router. After completing one vent the cross member is moved down to the next set of slots to line up the guide for the next vent. Also the jig keeps the project piece elevated to be able to route straight through the piece without digging into the table underneath.
It took me a few days to actually build the jig. Here's some picts of the finished jig and my practice piece.
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| Finished sides of the jig (made from MDF) |
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| Getting ready to make the first cut |
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| Three cuts in |
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| The vents from the back side |
Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. As you can see from the pictures the cuts still need to be cleaned up a bit with a file but that's no big deal. It took four passes with the router to complete one vent so it'll still take a lot of patience but the jig was very sturdy and very easy to work with. Unfortunately I broke two tabs on one of the sides of the jig when I was building it--if you look closely you can see them in some of the picts--so it's not perfect but it still should be pretty usable.
Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be testing some edge banding, another thing I've never used before.
