To remove blemishes and burn marks from routed profiles there is a simple trick - using what you already have!
When you need to remove a burn or blemish from the routed edge of a piece of wood, DON’T USE A PIECE OF SANDPAPER! There’s a better way!
With sandpaper, even fine grits, there’s a risk of rounding over the crisp edges of the profile or having an area along the edge that doesn’t match everything else. Instead, don a pair of gloves and reach for the router bit you used to form the edge to begin with.
In this episode, DirtFarmerJay will show you that by grasping the shank firmly and using the sharp edge of the bit, you now have a perfectly shaped scraper that can be used to “fine-tune” the trouble spot. This is especially handy for burn marks!
Routed edges are a great way to bump up your craftsmanship when constructing wood projects. With this tip, you can get great results and make it just that much easier to JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
If you ever need to clean up the profile
on an edge of a board like this,
where there's burn marks or it needs some light cleanup,
don't reach for the sandpaper.
You'll ruin the profile and there's a better way.
Stay tuned and I'll show you the trick.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
You know, when I need to clean up the edges
of these profiles like this, there is a quick trick.
Now, you may be tempted to go ahead and reach
for, you know, a folded piece of sandpaper
and kind of work along in here or wrap it around
a piece of pipe or do that sort of thing.
But you run the risk of rounding off edges
and actually changing the profile.
And that may not show too badly along a long edge,
but let's suppose where you did that,
it's right at a miter on the long points.
And now you end up with mismatched miters and so forth.
Or you might be able to, you know,
take something like this and try to work it in.
But there is a faster, better way.
And that is the router bits you use themselves.
These are great little mini scrapers.
And you can use it not only for cleaning up wood
that you've done, but as you can see here,
where I have a fluted column that's already painted
and I'm getting ready to put a second coat on
and there's little baubles in the paint or dust bumps.
Those kinds of things.
You can use the actual shape, the router bit you use
as a gentle scraper, very sharp scraper.
Now realize, because the way bits are made,
it's gonna scrape on,
if I was using it like this to scrape something,
it would scrape on the upside going up.
And if I wanted to scrape on the downside,
I'd have to use the other coming down.
You would put the bit in a horizontal orientation,
grab a pair of gloves,
or grab the body of the router bit and use it to scrape.
Now, in this case here, I have a little piece of maple
and this round over bit was used to cut that.
And as you can see on the end grain, which happens a lot,
you get a little bit of burn here.
So using the actual bit that was used to cut the profile,
we can place it in the same orientation.
You wouldn't want to over rotate it.
And if you under rotate, it's gonna kick away,
but hold it lightly and then just start scraping.
So here we have a piece of edge routed walnut
and you can see a very nice profile,
but if there were burn marks in it,
or I'd gone across the edge, this really works well.
So all I would do is set it here,
put the profile here and run at a very light cut across
and you can tilt it forward and hear it.
And notice the shavings that are starting to come off.
So they have shavings of it,
they're very light cuts, very light touch.
And you can remove the burn marks.
And as I said, this also works for painted surfaces.
If you were cleaning out a routed surface,
just using the actual profile.
If you need a bigger grip,
you can actually take a piece of wood,
drill a slightly undersized hole of a quarter or half,
depending on what shank size you're using.
And that gives you a handle to extend your grip
and just get that nice clean draw.
This really works well and certainly replaces
that kind of thing, trying to get into the detail here.
Hey, if you have a tip like this,
you find that your fellow woodworkers
might find to be helpful,
make sure you put it in the comments below
and we'll help get the word out about your idea.
And if you really thought this was helpful to you,
like the video, better yet, subscribe to our channel.
And when you do, make sure to ring the bell
because you'll get immediate notifications
approximately every Friday of when a new video comes out
in the shop, in the kitchen, out around the yard,
or great product reviews or truck accessories.
Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay
from DirtFarmerJay.com.
