A while back I built myself a dust collector inspired by this video:
It works well, and has already paid for itself from saving those expensive shop vac bags:
That project was the prerequisite to a router sled that I finished today. This is my own design based on bits of ideas from various examples on the internet. Part of the reason for creating my own is that, other than an 8' piece of 2"x2" 1/8" aluminum angle that I had to buy, everything else was on-hand so it all ended up fairly inexpensive. It can hold a piece of wood up to about 18x48"x2.25" so should work for pretty much any bass project, plus most other wood working projects I can think of:
The cheap bottom clearing bit I bought worked extremely well. I may not end up buying a more expensive one until this one gets too dull:
This neck blank (for
another build I am starting 
) had a slight warp so needed to be fixed before I started shaping. I was pretty shocked how nice a finish the sled gave. You can see the original surface planing marks in the bottom left corner of this shot, plus a some sharpee line right next to it, and the bit took off the surface in the top and right of the picture:
The router bit left a much cleaner finish than the thickness planer, with no significant overlap marks. I almost can't believe it worked that well.
Unfortunately the dust port on the router did not surpass my expectations. It basically did not work at all, since the bottom is wide open, so I need to come up with some better dust extraction system. Maybe just add a wall on each end with a slot in the bottom connected to a vacuum hose. Until then I guess I will just vacuum the whole garage after using it!
The other issue is had was how to hold small pieces while flattening them. For pieces with offcut parts, like neck blanks, I can screw the piece down, from the bottom of the sled, in a spot that will eventually be cut off. But for thin things with minimal offcut, like fretboard blanks, they can't really be screwed down. I tried using a couple of small squares of double-sided carpet tape, and that worked well until it didn't. One piece I was flattening had a slight curve to it and the tape eventually let go while I was in the middle of thicknessing. This resulted in the router taking off a big gouge, and might have made an otherwise beautiful walnut blank too thin
Any suggestions from someone who has a sled on better ways to hold things down? I guess pros use a vacuum table but I'm not ready to make one of those -- yet. Maybe I just need more tape for now.
Anyway, here is the finished black walnut neck blank, a couple of possible walnut blanks for my
6 string "one piece" build plus a couple of figured maple fretboard blanks for the
pickup mule build:
! Me too
