World’s Cheapest Router Plane

Home brew router plane

I was chiseling out a recess for an LED RPM display for my sim rig and realized trying to do it by hand with a chisel was just self torture, so I changed tactics and built another tool.

Nothing original here, I’ve seen it done multiple times, but it works great. I put an edge on an old beat up 1/4″ chisel, eyeballed the angle and drilled 1/4″ hole through a scrap bit of 2×4. Then pushed the chisel through the 2×4 whilst twisting it to cut a chisel-sized hole, and I had a working router chisel.

This works surprisingly well. Tap the back of the chisel with a light hammer to advance the chisel, tap the back of the block to move it backwards. Would have worked better if I’d chosen a flat bit of 2/4 (this piece has a pretty good warp in it), but it was good enough to get a consistent depth recess routed.

It worked so well I’ve added making a decent one to my ridiculously long to-do list. I may actually get round-tuit some day. 🙂

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