: I was scarfing some plywood [4mm okuome] with a block plane [a great
: invention] but try as i might my scarfs werent up to snuff. When glued
: together they just didnt lay nearly flush enough. This really unerved me
: as I thought I really took my time and patience with the task.

: Well, with my jigsaw, I cut all the plywood scarfs off and started anew. This
: time however I went beyond just block planing and finished the scarfed
: ends with a dremel. i first tried sandpaper on a block of wood, but this
: was way too slow. Instead, just a light light brush with a dremel at
: 15,000 rpm's and those scarfs were PERFECT. This rotary tool let me make
: the most delicatley tapered ends that, I'm sorry, no block plane would
: allow.

: Who knows, maybe more experience planing would have made the dremel uneeded.
: Whats ceratin however, is that with a careful hand [and some dremel
: experience] the rotary tool provided a shortcut to achieving some crisp
: edges I dotn believe i wouldve achieved otherwise.

: Pete

Hi Pete

I used the dremel router attachment to hack out holes in the stripper for other stripping. Made doorskin ply templates and flipped them for symmetry. For a repeatedly smaller outline, just started w/ a large and cut it, glued it back together,routed, cut it, glue etc until the smallest size I wanted reached.

For the base and template follower, used a doorskin base w/ a plastic anchor nut CA'ed so the bit could go thru the ctr. and allowed for the nut offset by making the templates that dimension larger. Fairly small template follower.

But the dremel router base is a pc of shzt. So flexible that precision cutting was nfg what with successive deeper cuts. Took some precautions, but probably should have made another base myself. Time better spent.

Used a 1/4 in router a bit, but the dremel visibility was better. Trade off. And I guess I was super lucky when the dremel router jumped the template on horror stricken evening and caused a bit less damage than a larger one would have. Hard to describe the feeling when you realize a power tool is making its own happy way thru some hard laid pristine stripping. Took some work , time and vocabulary to recover.

Thanks for the tips on other uses.

-mick