Hollows & Rounds

The edges of furniture I made for 5 years were various derivatives of the same 12 router bits. Every time I thought about my next piece I immediately thought about the various profiles involved. "How will I get close?" "How will I have to change it?" "How much will a new router bit cost?" Inevitably, "which router bit of the 5000 offered is closest to what I want?"

I hosted a booth at a Lie-Nielsen Handtool Event this last weekend at Phil Lowe's Furniture Institute of Massachusetts. I always field questions regarding the planes I offer and I'm often told that a router can do the same thing.

Here's what a router cannot do.

I had an issue of Popular Woodworking on my bench and asked a fellow woodworker to pick out a profile in the pages. We settled on the profile beneath the chest of drawers' top in the feature article: a reverse ogee and astragal. We had the profile complete before the end of our conversation, not a derivative, not something that will work as well, not another swipe of the credit card followed by 3 day delivery. We were done.

I used a rabbet, a #6 hollow and round, a snipes bill and a #2 hollow. Here are the steps I took.

I have a list of reasons why hollows and rounds are appropriate in today's shop. The reason why they are in mine is because they let me do anything. They end tooling. They end compromises.