hand router and aluminum?

Works great. Leaves a clean edge on the aluminum (I had even tried a triple chip blade made for non ferrous work) I was and still am quite cautious. I have a graphic image of what might happen were a bit to grab aluminum, and yet I have had worse things happen in red oak and Plexiglas.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Keep the whole world singing. . . . DanG

It can be done and with excellent results. I'm active duty Coast Guard. When I was stationed in Grand Haven, Michigan (between 1995 - 2000) I had a situation where I had to put a Freeman style hatch into the forward deck of a non-standard boat. The boat had an aluminum hull, deck and framing. We had no way of accessing the forward bilge's of the boat and we had a situation where the underwater hull kept cracking. Turned out that the boat had been built with insufficient framing and we had to access the space to strengthen the hull by adding additional frames. I wanted to be able to keep an eye on things and didn't want to just seal the bilge's by repairing the hole we cut in the deck by replacing the section we cut out, thus the Freeman style hatch. The problem with the hatch was the sides of the hatch fit perfectly between the boat deck frames, but the frame would interfere with the lip of the hatch. I didn't want to butt weld the hatch frame to the top of the deck as it would be a possible tripping hazard, not to mention I don't like butt welds. The deck was something like .25" thick and the lip was something like 5/16" (the actual figures may be off, but you get the picture), plus it would look like hell. So I had my DCCS use a router with a new carbide router bit with the depth set at .25" and cut the deck off the frame. Very noisy, but worked like a champ. The hatch frame fit into the area perfectly, and although it did stick up slightly above the deck (about 1/16"), it did not create a hazard. My DCCS was an artist when it came to TIG welding (among other things), the hatch looked like it belonged there. Keep in mind that the area had to be gas freed; one of my collateral duties is a gas free engineer and I had/have all the proper equipment to do it with. Thus it was done safely and with all proper PPE worn.

Dave Young

Slightly off your topic, but I have seen guys using a skilsaw with a carbide blade to cut 1" thick aluminum plate. They use a little bit of kerosene, brushed on, as a lubricant.

I would think that the router actually goes too fast at full speed (25,000 rpm). I'd slow it down a lot, or feed it real slow. With a good router table and with good support and holding equipment, sounds like it would have lots of possibilities.

Pete Stanaitis

noel wrote: