warning regarding Bosch palm router
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:10 am
I had a close call recently that could have really ruined my day, and thought I'd pass it along. I bought a few Bosch Colt palm routers recently and set each one up for a specific purpose. On the near fateful day, I was using one of the routers with a cutter that was about one inch in length, but set to only cut at a depth of about 1/16 inch, so quite a lot of the cutter was sitting up above the baseplate, exposed in the open area where the collet wrench is used to tighten the collet nut. The cutter shaft was inserted all the way into the collet so that the carbide teeth of the cutter were positioned about 1/16 inch below the collet nut. I turned the router on, and, with both hands on the router, made a short test cut, then repositioned my right hand on the router to move the router away from the cut so I could inspect the cut. As I repositioned my right hand on the router, the two middle fingers of that hand found their way into the opening at the base of the router, which coincided with a very sudden sharp pain at my finger tips. I immediately grabbed the upper portion of the router with my left had and dropped my right hand down to my side, afraid to look to see how much of my finders I had just lost. But, when I raised my hand up to have a look and to apply direct pressure to what was left, I was amazed to see that everything was still intact. My finger tips had only hit the spinning collet nut. However, the close call left me a bit shaken, especially after I examined and noted how narrowly I had missed sticking my fingers into the spinning cutter, which was nearly fully exposed through the opening that I had stuck my fingers into. The collet nut that I had hit looked so small in comparison to the exposed cutter.
So now, all of my Colt routers have a pieced of 1/4 inch hardware cloth (heavy wire screen) securely placed over all of the openings. Due to the ergonomic design of the router (or maybe just the way I tend to hold the router), my fingers are constantly up against that protective screen, so I'm very glad the screen is there. Because my Colt routers are set up for dedicated tasks, I don't need to have access the collet nut very often, so the screen is not an issue in terms of access to the nut.
Many folks on this forum have indicated that they use the Colt router, so I thought I'd pass on my experience in the hope that it might help to prevent a very nasty injury to someone else. I'm a very safety conscious person, but I just didn't see my close call coming, even though, when I watch the Colt demo video on the Bosch web site, that guys fingers are constantly in very close proximity of the spinning cutter. Short cutters that are fully extended below the base plate wouldn't present the same danger, but there's a lot of set-up situations where cutters can be exposed in the window area of the router, just waitin' to take a bite out of a misplaced finger... or two.
G-man
So now, all of my Colt routers have a pieced of 1/4 inch hardware cloth (heavy wire screen) securely placed over all of the openings. Due to the ergonomic design of the router (or maybe just the way I tend to hold the router), my fingers are constantly up against that protective screen, so I'm very glad the screen is there. Because my Colt routers are set up for dedicated tasks, I don't need to have access the collet nut very often, so the screen is not an issue in terms of access to the nut.
Many folks on this forum have indicated that they use the Colt router, so I thought I'd pass on my experience in the hope that it might help to prevent a very nasty injury to someone else. I'm a very safety conscious person, but I just didn't see my close call coming, even though, when I watch the Colt demo video on the Bosch web site, that guys fingers are constantly in very close proximity of the spinning cutter. Short cutters that are fully extended below the base plate wouldn't present the same danger, but there's a lot of set-up situations where cutters can be exposed in the window area of the router, just waitin' to take a bite out of a misplaced finger... or two.
G-man