: Hi John

: I had some repetitive large shapes to place, so I made a shape template for
: the router to route the yak. Then routed the yak, cut and reglued the
: template for varying sizes, rerouted, cut, rerouted etc, etc.

: Then I tightly stretched and taped thin tracing paper over ea hole and ran a
: pencil lead held sidways around the hole. the sharp edges of the hole
: pressing against the sideways pencil lead made a very very good impression
: on the paper.(for my level of woodwork anyway) Then remove the paper and
: lightly glued it to ea appropriate blank and tiny bandsawed to the line.
: Then file and fit, file and fit, file and fit etc etc nausea etc. snore.
: GOt some ok fits, some semi ok.

: I moaned and groaned that the shapes I was using wouldn't allow simple double
: router passes(this is a guess by me), but some simple large inlays could
: be done using an outside template to cut a new outside and inside template
: at the same time.So the 2 templates now differ by only the bit diameter.
: Use a template follower w/ an offset thickness 1/2 the bit diameter and
: route out the hole - the hole is half the bit diameter smaller. Use the
: same follower to cut the positive - the positive is half the bit diameter
: larger. Now if we're lucky, the 2 pces should come close to coinciding.
: might work for some situations, check it out first - wouldn't have worked
: for me, too bad. Idea anyway.

: -mick

: ps remember w/ the router to carefully watch that it doesn't jump the
: template. I had to commit suicide one evening when I realized the router
: was about 2 inches past where it should be. (this is not really me talking
: - just bits are left)

Hi Mick,

I have never messed around with a router very much but it had entered my mind that it would be nice to have an inside and outside template of the rams head but it would be a lot of work just for one shot and I would still have to do a lot of small sharp sections by hand in the female cut. It also looked like the female template would need to be flexible to comform to the rounded deck but the male template would be flat and cut a flat ram which wouldn't fit because of the distortion from curved to flat. Maybe I am not veiwing this right. But it looks like small repetive patters on fairly flat surfaces would work OK with templates and save a lot of work. Something to think about.

John