My First Close Call

If you looked close enough at my router table setup from my last post, you might a see a “mistake” I made while constructing my bookcase:

A closer looks reveals this was quite the gouge through the surface of my router table:

You might look at the location of the gouge and wonder “How on Earth did that gash end up there, given where the router is attached to the table?”
- Yes, this was made with a router bit.
- No, it wasn’t from the router mounted to the table.

I had decided to route the dados to hold the shelves in the sides of the bookcase because the sides were large (about six feet tall) and I don’t own a dado blade set for my table saw – so it was easier to take the tool to the workpieces than vice versa. I had a 3/4″ straight bit in my plunge router and had clamped a piece of scrap wood to my router table to test the depth I had set on the router.  I started to work the router through the scrap piece and things didn’t feel right at all (Signal #1).  As I kept pulling the router towards me (Mistake #2), I started to see sawdust that looked nothing like the plywood I was cutting (Signal #2) and everything was shaking more than it should have (Signal #3). After all this I switched the router off, but then lifted the router off the work piece to see what was wrong (Mistake #3).  I was instantly greeted by a loose router bit flying past me, as it came completely detached from the router. As it turned out, Mistake #1 was not properly tightening the collet.

You can see from the picture above I routed a pretty deep gouge almost all the way through the table surface.  I managed to knick the mitre gauge slot in the process, which in turn chipped one of the blades on the straight bit.  I’ve keep the broken bit as a safety reminder to myself and I’ll post a picture of it once I find it in the mess I call a garage shop. Thankfully through all of this, no one was hurt. But you bet I triple check the collet each time I use my router…