Q:

Router Duplicator for stocks and stuff…

The threads about customs stocks have interested me, as I’m a wood carver. I make custom duck decoys, and some years ago built a duplicating machine to fill an excessively large order of decoys economically. Since I make custom decoys, no two are the same, the duplicator is of no use to me since I completed that order.

Basically, it works like any other router duplicator. You afix a master copy to the bench, in line with the tracing stylus, and a blank block of wood in line with the router. Due to the way I counter balanced the weight, the thing is effortless to use. You simply drag/rub the tracing stylus over your master copy, and the router cuts away the corresponding waste material from your block. Since the router bit can’t move anywhere the stylus can’t go, it forms an exact duplicate of the profile and shape of the master. I just used it for quickly getting the shape roughed out, and not for finish work, but with progressively smaller router bits, it will produce a part about 80 to 90% finished. It’s kinda astonishing the first time you use one of these type machines. It’s like cheating. Because it is.

This is what it looked like before I mounted it on the work-bench…

This gives some idea of the distance between the tracing stylus and the router’s cutter…about 11-3/8″. That’s the Y-plane. The X-plane travel will alow me to carve an item up to about 20″ in length. Seems perfect for Airforce stocks, but not long enough for a traditional rifle stock. Longer bearing rails would lengthen the travel. The rails on this one are 24″

Here’s the motor, a Porter Cable 1.75 hp router. It’s probably overkill for the type of wood I’ve used it on, but on hardwoods suitable for gun stocks, it would be nice. It turns at 27,000 rpm. I like the custom CNC milled mounting bracket that I got for the router. It makes the whole set-up extremely rigid. The other half of the machine, the stylus, is just a drill chuck that will hold a stylus the same diameter as the router. I used nothing but 1/2″ cutters, so a 1/2″ oak dowel chucked up in the thing worked nicely.

Mods/Machinists

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mm very interesting mate .for some time now i,ve been looking for some wood /nice walnut for my rimmi.next stage is to find some one to router the internals as the rimmi one,s r staged and to use it free hand with a peice off wood that cost,s over £200 would be daft this could be the answer .something similar 😀

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