Reply To: Wooden toy train tracks
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Toy trains don’t usually have flanged wheels sitting on rails, or channels in the track for wheels to sit into. They just have raised sides keeping the train in place. A flexible wooden beading strip fastened to each side of a flat track-bed would serve your purpose.
Or use a section of curved track as a sole. It will fit the arc of similar pieces, following the same curve.
Or attach a very wide wooden sole, fastened at one end with a screw for a pivot-point, so your router will trace curves with the same radius as your track. You can repeat the same pre-defined curves again and again. Moving your track nearer the pivot point for inside tracks, further out for outside tracks.
Or you could make a raised piece and stick it to the centre of the track-bed. Raising the centre, instead of lowering the sides.
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I really dislike seeing published photographs supposedly demonstrating these hand-routers following curves and making accurate straight channels in narrow boards. The 71’s won’t accurately follow curves using the tiny fence they provided. It was a sales gimmick. An attempt to sell ‘improved’ routers with “all bells & whistles”, to people who owned wooden ones. But none of these features work.
The fence is too short, and too shallow.
Grooves in the sole restrict smooth forward/backward motion.
The open throat isn’t visually ‘open’ at all. Reversing the iron gives us an open view.
Depth-gauge (not STOP) is prone to sticking, difficult to read from above, and inaccurately cast.
Depth markings on irons look technical, but aren’t accurate, and vary from iron to iron.
A channel guide (inverted depth-guide) and fence supposedly transform the router into a 044 plough plane.
The only real improvement was the projection on the screwed-post limiting travel of the clamping collar and keeping it square to the iron.