38 VIDEO TIPS FOR ROUTING A BULLNOSE PROFILE*

In this video I want to show you about the bullnose profile as it applies to decks

That's what you see going on here. The deck boards overhang the support structure like they do in just about every deck

But instead of leaving it square as it comes from the factory, I like to put on this as I said a bullnose profile

It's a semicircular profile. This piece of wood is an inch and a half thick. A piece of

composite actually is an inch and a half thick just like regular construction grade lumber

Now I want to show you how I use a router to create this kind of profile

You can use it in in any application on your deck. Any place where some wood overhangs something else

That's going to look really nice and you can apply it to different thicknesses of wood too

Depending on the router bit you use as you'll see. This is a router and this is the router bit that I use to create these bullnose profiles

And I'm going to tell you about a router spins a bit very quickly about 20 to 25 000 rpm

And so it imparts the profile that you see here. The quarter round profile onto what I'm routing

This bearing on the top here rides up against the edge of the wood and it regulates the bit

It keeps the bit kind of going straight because it's following the straight line of the wood

So a couple of things. First of all as I said this is inch and a half thick

And I'm going to be creating that bullnose shape with two passes of this quarter round bit

So in order to work properly the radius of this quarter round bit needs to be half of the thickness

of the wood that I'm working with. So half will be routed on one side and then half will be routed on the other

And the idea is to get those things to mesh properly. To get those two passes to mesh properly

And as I'll show you that's a function of the height of the bit in the router

Now the reason I like to use this bit for this operation is because this bit is relatively

inexpensive compared with other bits that you could use to do the same job. It also has a lot of different uses

It can be used for this job, for all kinds of furniture making and cabinet making

Anytime you want to make a rounded edge on something this round over bit, that's what it's called

is the thing to use. So this is a three quarter inch radius round over bit

And I'm going to use it to mill this inch and a half thick lumber

Now this is another bit. I'm just going to show it to you. It's a very useful bit and as you see it can create the whole profile in one pass

The problem is that a bit like this is considerably more expensive than a bit like this

It's harder to find and its uses are more limited. In fact, this one, as big as it is, is not even big enough to do this piece of wood

Because as you'll see, the working width of the thing is an inch and a quarter

and I need an inch and a half. So this is a bullnose bit and I use it in my shop but not for this job, as you'll see

Now I'm going to be making three passes, three routing passes on this piece of wood to show you how it works

And I'm going to intentionally make a mistake on two of them

And this mistake is easy to do. Mistake number one is where the bit is too far into the base of the router

You see a router like this, it spins the bit. Let me just unplug things here

It spins the bit. Let's make sure it's off. But the position of the bit in the router can change

It can go up and down. And so your job is to get the bit so that it's cutting just flush with

this piece of wood, this piece of material here, with the face plate of the router

Not too shallow and not too deep. And that's really what it comes down to

That and one other little operation when you're finished routing. Now I'm going to make my first intentional mistake

See this, this edge here, right here, should just seamlessly transition to the base of the router

But it doesn't. It's a little bit below. So I'm going to take two passes, just on one side of this little piece of chucks here

one side and the other, so you can see what too shallow looks like

So this doesn't look too bad. But the problem is that there's not a smooth curve

There's kind of a ridge here where you're flat and all of a sudden you start right away in the curve

That's because the bit wasn't low enough. So the curve didn't come around smoothly

It's a little bit too deep. So I'm going to take a few passes. The bit wasn't low enough

So the curve didn't come around smoothly to the face. Now it met fairly well in the center because that's just the nature of the bit

But now, before I do it the right way, I'm going to make the bit stick out too far

So you can see what sort of a problem that causes. So now the second intentional mistake that I want to make

has to do with the bit sticking out too far. So we have the router base plate

And once again, there's not a smooth transition. But this time I can feel the edge there

And that's going to cause a different sort of a problem as you'll see when I route both sides of the next section

I don't need to route the other side because you can see what the problem is

Now I've exaggerated this. You'd have to have your router bit adjusted pretty badly to create this sort of a lip

But once again, this is not what you want. And if I had routed the other side, there'd be a similar lip on the other side too

It actually doesn't look too bad. But it's not going to stand up very well on the deck because of the foot traffic and things

So now I'm going to adjust the router so that it cuts properly

And you'll see what a proper cut looks like. The actual adjustment, the proper adjustment is pretty tricky

And you can see right now the router bit is still above the face plate

I'm using a straight edge here. I could use my finger but the straight edge kind of magnifies any difference more

So let's see how I'm... I'm turning this knob. There's a knob down here at the bottom

Different routers have different mechanisms for fine-tuning the depth. But it's as close to perfect as I can get it by eye

It's always necessary to test these things before you actually cut it, cut your good deck boards

I think we're going to be pretty close. But let's give it a try

Well this one looks pretty good. It's a very smooth transition here and here

Now we do have a little bit of a ridge in the middle. This always happens

And earlier on I told you there's one other step involved. And the step involved just smoothening this with a sander

Just of course I would be doing a long board like this. But just a random orbit sander back and forth

Get rid of the ridge. It doesn't take any time at all. And just make sure that your transition is perfectly smooth all the way along the board

And then you've got a really nice bullnose profile. That's going to make your deck look better and really hardly take any time to do