fun to see, his opinions very strong and clearly stated, his writing voice unique. This time, a new photo of Mr. Warner on the home page, and a caption letting us know he died on July 28th.
If you don't know about him, Pat Warner is (was, I still haven't made the adjustment), what my friend Chris Black calls a "true routing guru." "Guru" is the right word, too, for Mr. Warner's advice would not lead you down an ordinary woodworking pathway. He showed you how to use routers as the true precision machines they are; the jigs he designed ignored convention and let you do amazing things in solid wood, plex, and even aluminum!
I first heard about Pat Warner from a client. I was assisting him in the building of a Greene & Greene-inspired mahogany door with stained glass lights. You know, the typical thing you use as a pocket door in your basement bathroom . . . long story.
My role in the project was to help zero in the design, and then cut the joints: through mortise and tenon on the 4" wide stiles of the door. We met in his basement to finalize the design and dimensions, and for me to pick up the wood. As we loaded the wood he asked: "So you'll be using Pat Warner's window jig to cut the tenons?"
"Huh?" I must have asked. Of course the client was baiting me - - and I had just taken the bait. He beckoned me to his computer. Understand, this was the spring of 2000, in the era of Web 1.0. Not every woodworker had their own site. "Blogging" was not yet a thing. Pat Warner's site was a revelation - - - then I bought one of his books. Then I bought one of his subbases, a bunch of the bits he recommended, we emailed back and forth several times.
Eventually that "window jig," modified to cut a lapped miter joint, became a long-running popular class at Highland Woodworking. Before I ran the class I emailed Pat to show him a couple of photos and ask his permission to use & modify his ideas that way. He was extraordinarily generous with his praise, and told me to go for it (not in so many words).
And the mahogany pocket door? I cut the tenons the way I had originally intended, table saw for the shoulders and band saw for the cheeks. But then they needed a little tweaking, and guess what? Window jig.
If not for Pat Warner I never would have thought to use a router to thickness a 3 cm by 14 cm piece of plastic to 5.4 mm at milling-machine-type tolerances (+0, -.05 mm I think it was). But I did, silently praising him the whole time while coolly acting like it was no big deal as I delivered the piece to the planetarium.
Buy his books: they are thought-provoking. Study his jigs: they work. Think of the router as a precision trimming tool: you can do great things.
http://www.powells.com/book/router-book-9781561584239/62-0
http://www.powells.com/book/router-joinery-handbook-9781558704442/1-4
http://www.powells.com/book/versatile-router-9781561587742/18-0
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Thank you for introducing me to Pat--and I'm sorry for your loss. So you can thickness plane a piece of plastic? I have been trying to figure out how to shave some of the back off of my plastic fabric-cutting dies that are too thick for my rollers.
ReplyDeleteRuth Chow
Thanks! Wow, there are so many variables to routing plastic I can’t give you a “for sure” answer without knowing more. It’s going to depend on the type of plastic (styrene is so brittle it seems like it would shatter, but I’ve never tried it!) For the work I describe in the blog, I had a small rectangular piece of perfectly flat plexiglass that I was able to affix to a “bed” of MDF with double-sided tape. Then I elevated the router above the bed with two more strips of MDF straddling the workpiece. Then I was able to take very, very light cuts using a wide bit in the router. If your cutting dies could be addressed that way, or maybe with a “window jig” like I show in the photo album I link to in the blog post, it might be worth trying! No guarantees from me, though - - I simply don’t know enough about your situation. Good luck!
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