A router is a tool that is often used to cut into a material, such as wood, to create curves and other shapes that are difficult to cut with other tools. Discover how routers are great for cutting out designs and doing trim work with help from an independent contractor and carpenter in this free video on power tools.
I'm Jeremiah Fox. I'm a carpenter and handyman our here in New York City. Hi, what does a router do? A router is a tool, and let me show you what a router is to start out with, looks kind of like this. This is a fairly medium duty router. Basically, it's a shaft that spins around real fast, and then you put various bits in to the shaft, and then that takes care of cutting in to wood. Basically what a router does is, you take a piece of material, usually wood, and then you sit the router on it, run it across it, and then with the spinning action, the bit will cut in to the wood, and leave a finisher surface, such as trim, lots of curved shapes. All your modelings that you see are pretty much made with routers. You can have curvy bits, you can do gauging out holes with it, you can even flush trim stuff, so if you have a piece of material that you want to cut to a certain shape, like a table top, or something, or a counter top, but you have, you don't know the exact measurements, and you want a real, nice trim fit, you put this bit on there, and then attach it, and then run the router over the top of it, and this little bearing will follow the surface of underneath, and then you get a totally perfect, smooth edge that just, seamless, just up and down. Router's are great for trimming just about anything, for cutting out designs. They've got a thousand and one uses. Now, when you're using a router, you want to be very safe. You want to have safety glasses on, it makes a lot of noise, so you're going to want to have your ears plugs, or ear muffs on for your ear protection, and it will cause a decent amount of saw dust, so you want to have a mask on to keep it out of your lungs. Very useful in many phases of home repair and remodeling.