Is there something called Hand Tool Karma? I’ve been working on some Shaker Silverware Trays to give away for Christmas. My weekends have been busy lately and I haven’t had had much time to work on my project. I was going to use my new Veritas Plow Plane, to make the grove for the bottom of the tray. It worked very nicely for the through groves, but I was having difficulties with the stop groves on the ends. I’ll go into that move later, but though I would just knock out the groves with my router.
I got everything set up on the router table, and cut the first couple of groves. I was in the middle of one of the other groves and my router turns off. I thought what the heck? I flipped the power switch off and on and nothing. I’ve never tripped a breaker before with my router, and it was only a shallow ¼” grove. Sure enough the breaker tripped. I gave the router and cord a quick once over, and scratched my head for a while. Flipped the router back on and I saw sparks this time!! I’m trying to keep this a G-rated blog, but some really bad words came out of my mouth!
I pulled the router out from under the table and discovered that one of the caps that holds the brushes in had come off. Sorry for the blurry picture.
When the brush came out it contacted the metal case of the router and shorted out. You might just be able to make the burn marks on the router.
I looked all over the shop floor for the cap, and finally found it under my bandsaw base. I was able to get the brush back in and the cap back on. I also checked the other cap and it was loose too! I never thought about checking these caps before. You might want to check yours.
I was worried I had done some real damage to my router, but I plugged it and powered it up. I may have dodged a bullet on this one, it spun up and worked fine for the rest of the groves.
Is there Hand Tool Karma, I think so!
