Routers and Doughuts

Saturday morning I set out to Glen Huey’s shop to do a little research on an issue I was having with my Bosch Colt router.

Earlier in the month I had purchased a precision collet from PreciseBits.com that would allow me to use 1/8” bits in my Colt for inlay work.  (Routing for stringing 1/16” and below)

When I tried to test fit the collet it worked great except I could never get it tight enough to actually hold a 1/8” bit.  This is because I was using both a spanner wrench that came with the collet and the tiny wrench that Bosch mailed out to people who didn’t like using the “red button” to tighten their bits.

The reason I don’t use the “red button” to help tighten my bits is because I use a Micro Fence plunge base with my Colt.  (Something that made the Colt 100x more useful!) And by doing so the base hides the button making it impossible to reach hence the use of two wrenches.

So what we found is that the precision collet was so much larger than the stock collet that it bottomed out on the wrench.  This made it impossible to completely tighten.  You could get it tight enough to not come off but not enough for it to hold the bit.

This is where out of the box thinking comes in.  We had to have a thinner wrench.  Since we didn’t have access to grinder we used a spindle sander and a fence to sand the end of the wrench down.  This allowed us to get it thin enough (without making it too thing to be used) so we could hold the bit in place.

What we deducted is that we know Bosch doesn’t give the extra wrench away with the kits (you have call them to get it) because of the “red button” deal and that PreciseBits.com didn’t have it when designing the collet for 1/8” bits.  Or if they did, they decided to still make it extra long to get extra threads holding the bit in place since it was so small.

So after that we walked over to Stan’s (a local doughnut shop) to reward ourselves for a job well done!

Now I’m wondering what I can modify this Saturday…

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November 18th, 2009