woodworking plans for furniture

Woodworkers who build cabinets or furniture always seem to be in need of just the right piece of hardware for one of their projects—hardware that meets a special need. Chances are good that the item you're looking for exists—but where? The products shown here represent but a few of the thousands of special-purpose hardware items available today.

It pays to know your hardware options, both at your local hardware store or home center and through mail order. For your convenience, on the next page, we list a group of mail-order firms (including The Woodworkers' Store, where we bought the items shown below) that offer selections of cabinet hardware. We think you'll find purchasing their inexpensive catalogs a good investment— and good reading, too.

Quick-Insert Hidden Hinges
Completely invisible with the door shut, and unob¬trusive when its open, these hinges install easily and quickly. Just drill matching holes in the door and frame, insert the hinge into those holes, drive a single screw through each side into the wood, and you're done!

Plastic Drawer Dividers
Ideal for compartmentalizing cabinet drawers, these nifty items fasten to the inside of the drawer sides with nails. The ones shown accept dividers from V to V thick, and come in two heights—2" and 3'r.

Vinyl Panel Retainer
With frame-and-panel doors, you've got to secure the panel some¬how. While you can cut thin strips of wood to do the job, this purposeful product sure makes the going a lot easier. You can cut it easily with a knife and miter it with standard tools. The type shown snaps into a groovi cut into the frame.

Counterbalanced Lid Hinge
This surface-mount, dual- purpose hardware item makes great sense for projects with lids, such as stereo cabinets and the like. Just position the lid and hinge, mark the location of the screw holes, drill starter holes, and mount the hinge. It's a snap!

Magnetic Touch Latch
Looking for a sleek- looking set of cabinets without door pulls? This catch holds the door closed until you press on the face of the door. To close the door, push the door shut and the latch holds it.

Plastic Magnetic Catch
Especially suited for small doors, this catch mounts in a hole bored into the frame; the metal strike attaches to the door. The catch shown is available in brown and white plastic.

Ornamental Surface- Mount Hinge
Designed for flush inset doors, this hinge doesn't require mortising. The leaves of the hinge align to ensure just the right space between the door and frame.

Out-of-Sight Shelf Supports
An interesting option to the more standard shelf support clips, these wire supports fit. into small holes drilled in cabinet end and divider panels. Shelves with grooves cut into their edges slide onto the supports. To change shelf positions, just move the wire supports up or down.

Easy-Does-It Glass Door Hinges
Hinging glass cabinet doors can be a hassle, but not with this temper-saving piece of hardware. To install a pair of these hinges, drill holes n the top and bottom of the cabinet, fit plastic inserts into the holes, slip the hinges into the inserts, slide the glass door into the hinges, and secure the door by tightening the screws in the hinge.

Slip-On Glass Door Strike
This simple-to-install strike is the perfect match for the glass door hinges shown here. (You can also use it with the touch latch described above.) Foam rubber pads hold the strike securely in place.

Mail Order Hardware Suppliers
The companies listed below represent a good cross section of the firms selling cabinet and furniture hardware (and in many cases other items) by mail. We'll tell you about others as we run onto them.

Applying finishes smoothly
Uniform coats are the exception rather than the rule with some finishes. To apply lacquers and Polyurethane finishes smoothly, fill a pan with hot tap water, and set the can of finish in it for a few minutes before use. Raising the material's temperature by only a few degrees—and choosing a poly- urethane foam brush as an applicator—will help avoid an uneven look when the finish dries.

Handy tape dispenser
In many shops, finding the right tape at the right time can be a problem. Once located, it's often covered with sawdust and wood shavings. To keep various types and sizes of tape in one handy location, use scrap wood and a piece of dowel or broomstick to make a tape dispenser. An old hacksaw blade reinforced with a wooden strip makes a good cutter.

Rx for difficult gluing
Getting the right amount of glue into hard-to-reach spots is a messy operation. To inject glue with "pin-point" accuracy, use a medical syringe with an 18- or 22-gauge needle. Keep the apparatus from seizing up after use by flushing the syringe and needle with warm water and storing them in a closed container of water.

Working with dowels
A dowel's shape is both a blessing—it makes the material a remarkably versatile woodwork¬ing resource—and a curse: work-ing a cylindrical object can be frustrating. This handy jig, a scrap 2X4 with a hole the diam¬eter of the dowel bored through it, makes dadoing, trimming to length, or decreasing the diameter of a dowel a safe and simple procedure on your radial-arm or table saw. Drive a finish nail through the 2X4 and just far enough into the dowel to prevent it from turning.

Paint brush maintenance
Your paint brush is clean but not dry. What's a good way to remove excess water or paint thinner? Hold the brush between your palms and spin it back and forth vigorously. Centrifugal force will spin away excess moisture and fluff out the bristles—which helps prevent the brush from drying into an unmanageable lump.

Sharpening with a drill press
Putting the proper bevel on chisels and plane blades isn't an easy freehand skill. Use a drill press and drum-sander attachment with appropriate grit sleeves to grind blades. Clamp the blade or chisel in a drill-press vise with the blade perpendicular to the table and parallel to the quill. Position and secure the vise to the table with a C-clamp. With the sander turning slowly, raise and lower the quill to sharpen the blade. To move the blade closer to the drum, tap the vise with a mallet. Work slowly to prevent excessive heat buildup.

No one knows everything about woodworking, but, with experi¬ence, we all run into better, safer, faster, or easier ways to do things.

Raising dents and scratches
Even the smallest dents and scratches mar the appearance of otherwise successful woodworking projects. To remove small dents or raise minor scratches in wood surfaces, wet and then cover the problem area with a damp cloth. Using a household iron on a dry setting, apply heat to the cloth for 15-second intervals. Take care to avoid scorching the wood.

Drill-bit straightener
Small-diameter drill bits are easily bent during normal use. To straighten a bent bit, chuck it into your drill and, while running the drill at full speed, insert the drill point into a piece of scrap wood. Apply slight sideways pressure to the drill to return the bit to its proper shape. When you release the pressure, the bit will continue to run true.

Avoiding nail splits
Even though you hammer carefully, your nail occasionally splits the wood. Blunt the tip of the nail by tapping it with your hammer to let the nail cut its way into the wood rather than part the material. Or chuck a proper-sized nail into a drill (you may need to cut off the nail head), pre-drill holes, and then ham¬mer and set nails.

First-aid for dull saber-saw blades
Halfway through a "must-do" project, you discover that the blade on your saber saw is dull, and you don't have a spare. Touch up the blade with a triangular file. Place the blade in a vise with teeth pointing up (don't pinch them). File away from you, giving each tooth two or three quick strokes. Rotate the blade 180° and file the other side.

Repairing torn grain
No matter how skillful you are with a plane, the grain patterns of some wood species make it almost impossible to avoid raising and tearing the grain. To fix tears, apply several drops of cyanoacrylate adhesive (the "super" variety made for wood and leather) to the affected area. Sand the spot immediately. Sanding presses the raised wood down, generates heat to set the glue, and produces fine sawdust that mixes with the glue to create an invisible and permanent repair. —Dean Case, Nevada City, Calif.

World-champion finishing jig
Applying finish to more than one side of an object is an awkward, messy chore. A steel swivel made to support a boxer's punching bag makes an ideal shop aid for holding objects that need finishing. Attach the swivel to a secure overhead support, screw an eye-hook into the object to be finished, and hang the piece on the swivel. The workpiece — not the woodworker—does all the moving. (A plant hanger that swivels is an inexpensive alternative for working with light objects.)

-to be continued-

How can one person make a building that will endure for centu­ries when another's work falls and turns to compost long before he does? Take some time to study the skeleton of a well-framed old barn. (It must have been well-framed. It's still standing, isn't it?) You will see the truth of what a 1745 book of trades said of the carpenter, that "Strength is the chief of his study."

Study the barn's frame, its vertical posts, horizontal beams, and diag­onal braces. Older than Stone- henge, this "post-and-beam" con­struction is the essence of the En­glish building tradition. Indeed, the first English settlers in the New World built houses and barns that were not much different from the ancient stone monuments they had left behind: simple frames consisting of posts set into the ground with beams spanning their tops. They were wooden houses, but hardly the work of carpenters. It's no wonder there aren't any of them left.

If you think of a building as a human body, then the old-time car­penter's job is to make the bones and the skeleton—the strong frame to which the joiners and roofers later apply the protective skin. Good carpentry makes strong frames by exploiting the wood's strength in three dimensions: the size of the building's individual tim­bers, the connections between these pieces, and the design of the frame as a whole. When all these aspects of the building work together, the carpenter has earned his pay.

Beams

Take a wooden pencil and push in from its ends to make it shorter. No go. Now bend it and it snaps in half. The point is that it is easy to make a strong post but harder to make a strong, yet lightweight beam. You need a way to size tim­bers so that they are as strong as they need to be, but no heavier than they must be. Fortunately you can turn to a simple guideline for help: The strength of a rectangular beam varies directly with changes in width. With changes in depth, however, the difference in strength is squared.

Imagine that you have to support a load with a beam measuring 2 inches wide and 4 inches deep. A 4 by 4 would be twice as heavy and twice as strong. A 2 by 8, however, twice as deep as the origi­nal timber, would also be twice as heavy, but would have four times the strength. A 2 by 12 would be nine times as strong, and only three times as heavy. The more a car­penter knows about the strength of his timbers, the more confidently he can approach the limits of the material.

Joints

You often hear that old buildings are held together entirely by wooden pegs. True, the pegs are there, but the strength of the build­ings is not in their pegs, but in their joints. These mortise-and-tenon joints interlock the timbers so that they sit solidly within one another. It is a rare building from which you couldn't remove every peg and have it stand as strong as before. (Try this with the nails in a modern structure.)

Braced Frames

Although a post planted deeply in the ground won't fall over, it will invite destruction by termites and rot. Once you protect a building by placing it up on foundations, however, you must stiffen it by adding the strength of triangles to the rectangular frame.

Diagonal braces strengthen the building in several ways. Ideally, a post is a perfectly vertical column that is compressed but not bent. If the post does start to bow, it can snap relatively easily. Braces con­nected to the post prevent the bend from getting started. And, by blocking the closure of the right angles created between posts and beams, braces also prevent the col­lapse of a building under wind.

Making billets

"In summer, the green, felled log must be split within ten days, or the ends will dry out and check," our woodworker says. "In winter, though, splitting can be done as long as four months after the tree has been dropped."

From Billet to Split

Our woodworker begins the process of turning billets into splits by taking off the bark with a drawknife at the shav­ing horse.

Removing the bark

Next, the individual billets are shaped to desired form, also on the shaving horse. "The object," ex­plains our woodworker, "is to taper each end of the billet so that when strips come off, they'll be wide in the center for

Splitting the billet with a drawknife the bottom of the basket, and they'll taper toward their ends to form the basket's ribs.

Our woodworker does this shaping with the drawknife, turning the billet to work it from both ends. He uses the same method to form weavers, the long, narrow, and straight pieces that tie the ribs together. He de­pends on a well-developed eye to maintain widths.

Traditionally, from the shaving horse, billets would move to the workbench to be split into weavers or ribs with a drawknife and a simple jackknife. Standing a billet on end, the basket maker would split it with the drawknife down its length parallel to the annual growth rings. He would keep splitting until the pieces could no longer be reduced by that method, then switch to the jackknife. Our woodworker knows the old way, too.

Placing the blade of the jackknife in the grain, our woodworker begins the split. When the knife has separated enough of the wood to grasp by.

Pulling the split by hand

hand, it's put aside, and the pulling begins.

Hand-pulling becomes increas­ingly delicate as the strips near their final thickness. "If the split runs off to one side, you pull toward the other side," he says while demonstrating.

Final hand-pulling

That's the traditional way, but in the high production basket shop, the traditional takes too long. In­stead of hand-pulling, our woodworker has fit­ted a cooper's spokeshave with a planer blade to shave weavers and ribs from the billets clamped on a shaving horse.

Shaving a split with a spokeshave

It's still hand work, and the results aren't always uniform. Ac­cording to our woodworker, "anything done by hand is going to have some varia­tion on it."

With no gauge to rely on, the shaving technique requires a prac­ticed eye. "The thickness of the split is solely a product of how hard the spokeshave is pushed down and the strength of the maker's pull," our woodworker says.

He makes his splits "down the tree" with the spokeshave and then works the tool back and forth fol­lowing the grain and keeping it to the center. "The strips must be constant in their thickness, with ribs thicker and weavers thinner. If they're thick on the ends and thin in the middle, the basket will have a weakness," our woodworker explains.

The splits come off the shaving horse moist and pliable, ready for weaving. They'll stay that way for 3 to 4 days in normal weather, but hot days dry them out in an hour. That's when our woodworker wets the splits down with a sprinkling can or gives them a good soaking.

Two Types of Baskets in 50 Styles

To this basket maker, the world of split-oak baskets is divided into two parts—designs woven over a form and those built completely free­hand. Yarger makes both, in 50 different styles. Starting below, we'll follow him through the steps in making a formed, rectangular basket that's a popular seller.

From finding a special tree nestled into a hillside to interweaving thin white oak splits, basket- making challenges the eye and hand, and rewards the craftsman with enduring creations that earn their keep.

Early baskets were crafted from many common materials — cattail leaves, reed, willow, and tree bark. But the most easily made, most durable designs were made from thin, flexible strips of green sap- wood from ash, hickory, and best of all, white oak trees. In fact, one species of white oak peels so easily into splits that it's referred to as "basket oak."

Hunting the Basket Tree
Like wood-frame homes and table tops, baskets begin with trees, and Ykamato knows that just any old tree won't do. He prefers white oak but has also used walnut and hickory for his baskets.

His search for the perfect white oak begins on the northeast slopes of Ozark hillsides. According to Ykamato, there are three reasons to select a tree from a northeast slope. First, because the wind normally blows from southwest to northeast, the trees on a sheltered northeast slope tend not to be twisted. Also, the wood isn't dried out and brittle from too much sunshine. And third, since ground moisture remains longer on these slopes, the trees absorb and retain moisture so their wood tends to stay workable.

Finding the area is only the beginning. Next comes selecting the perfect tree—about 10 inches in diameter, free of branches for about the first 10 feet (to eliminate knots), and straight-grained.

How can Don tell if a standing tree is straight-grained? His trained eyes can spot a good tree a long way off: "I can tell how it's going to split by the way the bark looks. If it runs pretty much straight up and down the tree, it's going to be straight-grained and come apart pretty well," Ykamato explains.

Ideally, our woodworker looks for a tree that will yield a 5- to 6-foot log from the base to below the lowest limb —the moistest part of the tree.

Basic, Commonsense Tool Kit

Measuring tools:

Combination square Sliding bevel Marking gauge Framing square Steel tape (10' or 12') Folding rule Compass

Scratch awl Cutting tools:

Crosscut saw (12 pt.) Rip saw (6'/z or Th pt.) Backsaw or dovetail saw (15 tpi) Coping saw Hacksaw Slip-joint pliers Needlenose pliers Diagonal cutters Shaping tools: Smooth plane Low-angle block plane Wood chisels (V, V, V, Single-cut mill bastard file Round rasp Flat rasp

Cabinet scraper and hand scrapers

Utility knife Joining tools:

Claw hammer (16 oz.) Finish hammer (8 oz.) Nail set Wooden mallet

Screwdrivers (Straight, Phillips)

Doweling jig

Bench vise or clamping system Bar or pipe clamps (2-3' and 2-5' min.)

Handscrews C-clamps

Portable power tools: Router (1 HP, V collet) (Purchase bits as needed: bead, chamfer, cove, dado, straight, round-over, rabbet) Circular saw (7V) Drill {%" variable speed) Twist drills (V'-V) Spade shaped drill bits Brad point drills Saber saw

Probably our most useful domestic hardwood, maple produces syrup for pancakes, school desks to scribble on ... and much more in between.

These qualities make it more valuable than heart- wood, which is uniform in color and runs from light reddish brown to dark brown.

Generally straight- grained with a consistent texture, maple also can have a bird's-eye or curly (also called fiddleback) pattern. Many woodworkers find the unique grain patterns of maple burl particularly appealing.

Soft maple, although similar in appearance to hard maple, produces lighter wood with more pronounced grain. Although not as tough, stiff, or heavy as hard maple, soft maple tends to resist warping and twisting better. Its color ranges from pale brown to almost white with brown streaks.

Working properties
Hard maple remains strong when ben;, absorbs shock well, works nicely with both power and hand tools, and resists wear. It also turns well and requires no filling before finishing. Hard maple takes a high polish and has substantial screw- holding power.
Soft maple works even more easily than hard maple. It glues, stains, and finishes well but doesn't take as high a polish as hard maple.

Uses in woodworking
Soft maple, used princi¬pally for lumber, paper pulp, and other industrial applications, continues to be suitable for cabinet frames, unseen parts of upholstered furnkure, and jigs and forms used in woodworking shops.
Hard maple applications include bowling alley sur¬faces, chopping blocks, piano frames, turnings, furniture (particularly figured-wood pieces), lad¬der rungs, rulers, tool handles, even clothes pins.

Cost and availability
Hard maple comes in average lengths of 6' to 12' and average widths of 6" to 10", while soft maple trees tend to produce somewhat wider boards. Both types are widely available and can be bought as lumber, veneer, and turning blocks. Maple is a rela-tively inexpensive hard¬wood, although bird's-eye, curly, and burl varieties can be expensive.

Perhaps you've just completed a beginning woodworking course, or maybe you've recently assembled your first kit project. You thoroughly enjoyed these tastes of woodworking, and now you're ready for bigger challenges. But one obstacle blocks your way; you don't own the proper tools.

What tools does a beginning woodworker need, and how should he or she acquire them? In an unscientific poll of WOOD staff members, we assembled a basic tool kit for woodworkers—tools we think should be a part of any woodworking shop. With this equipment-and skill-you can perform most woodworking operations.

As you read the list, you'll notice we don't mention stationary power tools—the table saws, drill presses, band saws, and jointers that profes¬sional woodworkers and serious amateurs swear by. We left them out because this is a basic tool kit.
In at least one case, we did so with great reluctance. All of us would have liked to include a table saw in the package, but we omitted it for reasons of economy.

Even without the table saw, if you walk into vour local tool shop and ask for everything on our list, the clerk might ask you for a $1,000 bill. How can you get a start in this hobby without robbing a bank? We believe the answer is to plan carefully and buy wisely.

Plan Ahead
Equip your shop a few tools at a time. As your skills improve, so will your tool inventory. In this basic kit, we list the tools that we find indispensable in bold-face type. They're the items you're likely to find most useful and use most often, so think about purchas¬ing them first.

Can you sidestep any processes for which you're not well equipped? Some retail wood outlets will joint, rip, thickness, and crosscut lumber to size, for example. You pay for this service, of course, but in the short run it's less expensive than buying the tools you'd need to do the work yourself.

As you budget each new project, try to figure in the purchase of one new and necessary tool. You'll spread out the cost of equipping your shop, and you'll be able to enjoy a new tool with each new project.

Finally, remember that there are woodworkers who make exceptional pieces with hand tools only. We are addicted to the power tools in our shop, but we know that life can KO on without them.

Unlike dimension lumber, which is milled to industry-established nominal thicknesses, widths, and lengths, most cabinet-quality lumber stock comes in random widths and lengths to keep waste to an absolute minimum. In addition, since all furniture has different dimensions, there's no need for dimensionalized stock.

Thickness, though, has been standardized. As you can see from the chart above, for cabinet-quality lumber thickness is expressed in different ways. Don't be confused by this; remember that the quarter designation and the nominal thickness are the same thing.

When you order cabinet-quality lumber, you'll receive a board as long or longer and as wide or wider than the item ordered; the thickness (if surfaced) will be close to that listed in the chart.

In addition to the cabinet-quality lumber available from lumberyards, home centers, and retail specialty stores, you have the option of mailorder buying.

The number of firms offering quality hardwood by mail has mushroomed and you're likely to rind one close to your area of the country. Most firms offer a variety of dimensions and species as well as veneers-and turning blocks. Though you'll be able to order pieces down "A" in thickness, lengths will normally be limited to about 6 feet, since shipping traditionally is done via UPS or parcel post. You can make alternate shipping arrangements for oversize and larger amounts, but you'll have to discuss your purchase on the telephone. Discounts on large orders often apply. Some companies include shipping in their catalog prices; others charge separately.

Mail-order lumber definitely addresses a need for those woodworkers who don't have a supplier nearby. And the quality will be the highest possible for each specie offered.

If you have any questions or are uncertain of your needs before you order, call the company. That way you'll receive the quality lumber exactly what you require.

Note: When ordering by mail from an area of different climate, such as Pennsylvania when your home is in Arizona, Keep this in mind: differences in temperature and humidity cause changes in the wood and so can adversely affect the outcome of a project if you use it right away. So be sure to allow the wood to acclimate in a dry spot in your shop for at least two weeks before working.

One other lumber-purchasing option deserves mention because it sounds attractive to lots of people. And that alternative is green wood. In rural areas you can normally go directly to the logger and purchase a felled and de-limbed log, then hew it yourself, or take it to a mill. Or you can go directly to an area sawyer for the log and for any custom-cutting you desire. In metropolitan areas, you often can find green wood for free from tree- trimming services, water works and parks departments, and county and state highway departments.

Our advice on purchasing quality lumber green wood is brief and to the point: Unless you have prior experience with green wood and know how to bring its moisture content down, stick with kiln-dried material.

Unlike dimension lumber, which manufacturers grade according to its use in construction as full width and length members, hardwood is graded according to the expected number of clear face cuts a board will yield. And, since most hardwood is expected to be made into furniture, these cuts will be from 2 to 7 feet long. For more information on the hardwood grading system, which was developed by the National Hardwood Lumber Association, see the chart above. This same chart also discusses the grading system for white pine, which was formulated by the Western Wood Products Association. In cabinet lumber there are great differences in quality, just as there are in construction lumber, so use the chart as a guide.

Remember, too, that in building a large project such as a table or desk top, you'll generally need the higher grades of lumber because they have fewer defects and are available in greater widths and lengths than lower-grade boards.

Many retail hardwood dealers carry only the highest grades possible to avoid customer complaints and discount requests.

Until the late 1800s, lumber was sold by the pound, so under that system, dry board foot was less expensive than green wood. So obviously something had to be done.

The system of measurement that evolved centers around the board foot, a measurement that covers all the dimensional variables of cabinet- grade lumber - thickness, width, and length.

Today, when you purchase this type of lumber, you buy it by the board foot. Even if the dealer has the boards already priced, he arrived at those prices by first figuring the number of board foot each contained. It's a good practice to double-check the dealer's figures. To do this and also to help you estimate your lumber needs, you should learn how to figure board feet.

A board foot, simply, is equal to 144 cubic inches of wood. Think of it as a piece I inch thick and 12 inches square. Since board footage is always calculated in quarters of an inch thickness, starting at no less than 1 inch (even if you order less than an inch, you'll pay for the i-inch thickness), a 5/4 board 6 inches wide and 72 inches long would be figured like this: 1.25 (thickness) X6 (width) X72 (length)=540. Divide 540 by 144 to determine the number of board feet in the stock. If the board foot length is stated in feet rather than inches, use the same method but divide your total by 12 instead of 144.

Made of plywood, hardboard, and scrap hardwood, and custom-cut to fit your portable belt sander model, the jigs and fixtures to a workshop are the best choices to allow square edge sanding.

Start with a piece of V plywood large enough to fit your sander, allowing space for clamping at the bottom and the sides. Lay your sander on its side on the plywood and trace its profile, then cut along the line drawn.

Next, place the cutout plywood on a piece of V hardboard the same size and mark the cutout outline. Be sure to leave a ledge to support one side of the sander. After cutting the hardboard to fit, glue it to the plywood and allow the jigs and fixtures assembly to dry.

Lay the sander on the jig so that you can measure the sizes of the two clamping blocks - one for the body and one for the handle. Cut and assemble the hardwood clamps using wing nuts on bolts inserted through the base. To aid in sanding short pieces of material, make the stop fence. It attaches to the jig with V dowels.

How to use the Jig for nice jigs and fixtures
For square-edge sanding of plywood or edge-joined pieces, clamp the jig and sander to your workbench top. Make sure that you don't restrict the motor cooling cutouts, and that you don't turn down the sander clamps so tighl they'll distort the hardboard backing. When sanding edges, lay a piece of hardboard or other material under the stock in order to raise it slightly above the bottom edge of the sanding belt.

Short pieces become easier to sand, too, when you clamp the jig so the belt sander rides in its upside-down position. The stop fence keeps the material that's being sanded from running off the belt. Now you can try jigs and fixtures for your own purpose - enjoy!

Ask three or more woodworkers the above question and you'll probably get three different answer: right away, after a few minutes and after the glue had dried. Chances are equally good that the person who gives you any of the three answers will have a rationale that seems plausible. In short, the subject of glue squeeze-out is one that's sure to generate some good discussion among anyone who has worked with wood.

Whenever you clamp two pieces of wood together with glue in between, you're dealing with variables in clamping pressure, consistency and amount of glue and species of wood. All of these factors can affect the amount of adhesive that may ooze out of the joint, as well as the technique you use to remove it.

Chances are you won't actually use the tool before you buy it, but you can learn a lot about it while at the store. Try changing bits. Is it easy to get your wrench on the collet nut or does the bases interfere? Does the collet let go of the bit with a single turn of the wrench, or does it take two or three bites? Does the router have a flat top so you can stand it on its head for bit changes?

While cost, horsepower, and collet size are the big three considerations in selecting a router, you should also be familiar with the following:

Your collet size options. Almost any conceivable routing job you'll encounter can be handled by a router with a 0.25" collet. But, if you plan to do lots of exceptionally heavy work, you might consider a tool with a collet big enough to take 3/8" or even 1/2" bits. Just make sure it will take 1/4" bits as well. A few routers won't.