Making An Edge Banding Trimmer Attachment Homemade Machines & Jigs
This is kind of a followup on a project I did in 2012, an edge banding trimmer that was stationary and sized to fit on the end of my workbench. At the time I had a lot of smaller panels to do (shelves for my kitchen) and that machine handled those very well. There was a problem, however: it only really worked with small to medium size panels, and I’d be stuck with using the router free-hand for anything bigger.
Anyway, I used it at the time and then stored it away on a shelf until I needed it again, and basically forgot about it. Until while looking through my videos recently to see how they were performing, I saw that the video I made showing the trimmer had passed 1 million views. I thought that was crazy, given how poorly the video was made – more or less me just talking about it for more than five minutes with a very brief demonstration at the end.
I don’t have it anymore – probably scavenged it for parts to use in another project – but I did come up with an idea for one that works better. Or at least is more versatile, in that it could do any size panel. And be small and compact enough to bring the tool to the work, rather than bringing the work to the tool.
There isn’t a whole lot to this, and I got all of the materials I needed to build it from my scrap wood cabinet. Small offcuts of 3/4″ and 1/2″ Baltic birch plywood:
The first part to make is the sleeve that holds the body of the trim router, and I cut out three pieces of plywood for that:
The holes are at the front and are 1-3/4″. They provide ventilation and chip clearance for the router.
I glued and nailed the 3/4″ top to the 1/2″ sides with the sides snug against the router body:
And added two smaller blocks of plywood with bevels on the edges that meet the router:
I then used a long 1/4″ bolt to clamp the sleeve tight to the router body:
To fasten the front fence assembly to the sleeve, I used two 1/4″ hanger bolts driven into the end of the 3/4″ top:
The fence is two pieces that are joined using a dado cut to receive the rabbeted part on the horizontal fence:
The rabbet cut is to clear the edge banding that overhangs the panel and I made mine more than 3/4″ wide. This machine can also trim the edge of a table top that’s been wrapped with solid wood, and that’s often 3/4″ thick.
Holes are drilled for chip clearance, but as it turned out these were not big enough. See the size shown in the SketchUp model:
The fence assembly is fastened to the sleeve with a single screw at the bottom, and this allows to the fence to pivot up and down to make adjustments. The hanger bolt holes are drilled oversize for that adjustment range:
I added the 3/4″ brace to the fence assembly, but again the clearance hole at the bottom corner is too small – the SketchUp drawing shows it the right size:
I also rounded over the corners on the sleeve to make it more comfortable to hold.
To test it out, I made a panel with two thicknesses of solid maple edge banding and set the machine to trim it perfectly flush with the surface:
Watch this in the video below. The edge banding trimmer also works with the iron on stuff, and I show that in the video as well.
Another benefit is that this will work with an ordinary straight cutting bit:
This is a 5/16″ one, but it can be configured for any size (within reason) bit
Here’s the video showing how it works:
If you are interesting in building one, here’s the SketchUp model free to download:
Edge Banding Trimmer Attachment