Bevel Jig

Here a post describing the jig I made for routing the bevel on the underside of the walnut pedestal table. It is a nice detail that lets you keep a thick and stable top but makes it look thin and well proportioned from the side. Seeing as I do not have a shaper with massive bits I had to figure out a way to accomplish this. After talking over various options with different people, I figured the router would be the safest way to go after investing so much time and wood into the top of it. (minimizing risk) I think Don Stenner actually was the one who suggested making a jig that held the router at the angle I needed to accomplish this.

I started with a drawing. I knew the table top was 1 1/4 " thick and I wanted it to be 3/4 " at the edges and the bevel itself was to be 3" wide. I concluded that the bevel angle needed was 9 degrees.

So I built a jig out of mdf that was basically a router trammel.



On the bottom side of the table I had a tiny hole drilled in the center. This was actually left from the method I used to cut out the round top. It is a tiny hole that is never seen as it is on the underside. The jig has a dowel that fits into this hole and acts as its pivot point. You just spin the jig in a circular motion. On the front side of the jig I fastened a ramp at 9 degrees.



The second part of the jig is the plate that the router gets fastened to.



I designed it to slide up and down the ramp without slop and so that it could be clamped to it.



The straight cutting router bit I used was 1" wide approximately, so I knew I would have to remove material in at least three passes.



Next I scribed the outside of the table to my 3/4 thickness using a marking guage. The rest was turning the router on and removing the material little by little. I started at the outside and worked my way to the scribe mark. Then I released the plunge router, and crept the plate uphill on the ramp and clamped it in place. Slowly I took off material in the second pass until I just reached the depth of my outside depth. With time and a micro adjust it was not long before the bevel was cut. It took minimal sanding and went a lot smoother than I anticipated.

It took some thinking about and some time building but it ended up being a detail I liked. If anything it was a challenge.

I hope this made sense for the wood nerds out there.