2023 Product Showcase: Pantorouter

Paul. We got another showcase to do you. Excited George. I'm so fired up. I love tools. I love seeing the innovation that is happening in the industry and it's fun to get together and talk about well being in the position we're in where we get to talk about it amongst ourselves. But then also share that with people. You ready to look at one. Let's do it. Here we go. So in your youth, did you ever use a pant as a kid? Maybe an art class? Maybe I did. Yeah, I had great uh kind of flashbacks to that when I saw this and that's, that's what Panter router is based on is the idea that if we trace a thing, we can make a thing. So I'm gonna ask you to hold that because I'm gonna be good at dropping it because I wanna give this a little spin. Oops, I want the whole table to go. There we go. And in this case, we're set up to do a through dovetail and the trace of thing cut a thing is here on this end, we can follow these plastic templates and on the business end over here, the router bit is going to cut pins and sockets, we can of course move these around. There's all sorts of variation we can do here. So I think in this case I'm going to quit talking and this is explained much better by watching how this joint gets cut, which is that joint right there. Let's just have a look at the video of how that through dovetail gets made. Router is a crazy cool tool that panto is based on a graph, a device that traces one component to make another component. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to cut it through dovetail. What this is designed to do this video is designed to do is give you an overview of how the Panto router works. And it's really important to understand it's not just about through dovetails, it's also about finger joints that we can do on the pan router, Morson tannin and not just conventionally shaped Morson tannin, but interesting shape. Morson Tenn, multiple Morson 10. So there are a huge variety of joints you can do. But let's talk about how this system comes together. The way this is going to work is that here on the template holder, you're going to put a template in here. In this case, my dovetail templates are already in place. Imagine those are gone and you want to do a mortis and a tenant, then we would use this template and the way this works is that we have a follower here that will trace whatever is in place. So in this case, when I make this vertical cut, the dovetail bit here is going to cut the tails of our joint. Then when we come back to the template and we trace the outside and we've changed to a straight cutter, we're gonna cut the pins and sockets. So then similarly, here, we can cut the inside and cut the outside depending on whether you're cutting the mortis trace, whether you're cutting the mortis or whether we're cutting the tenant. So it's this whole templated system that comes together to make the Panter router work. Now, the other thing that's cool about this is they have given Panter router has given a lot of thought to how do we simplify the whole setup process? A couple of examples on this end of the table, there's a scale, there's a ruler. And what I can do with that ruler is measure my material immediately next to it. There's a half scale, whatever my material measures, I can position that measurement on the center line, which then when I position my material on here automatically centers the material. Now that old concept carries through center line, center line, center line, we've got another centering scale here and then back to the template guide. There's another centering scale here. So when you put your templates onto the template holder, then this is all very simple because the measurements are in a line all the way from one end of the jig to the other based on this center point. So that makes it very easy to create our layout, whether it's dovetails, finger joints, Morson, tendon, whatever it is, what I like about the dovetails on this is that unlike most conventional router based dovetail jigs, we're not committed to a fixed set of fingers which controls the spacing. You can put these template guides wherever you want to create whatever joint you want. And that's what's going to give us the variable spacing that we're working on here. When the material comes in, we want a can a lever past the edge of the table, the distance that we can, a lever has some control over the joint. So this component is a stop. And if we're cutting dovetails, you're probably not just going to cut one board, you're going to cut a bunch. So every time a board comes in that's going to control its position, lock that in place, slide that out of the way. Now with the dust shroud off, I just want to show you the way that's going to come together when we follow the guide here, follow that vertical groove. When I move down, the bit is going to move straight down and that's what's going to again, cut. Our tails depth of cut is controlled by a stop on my side of the jig that stop position is relative to the thickness of our mating piece. Again, very easy to set up very repeatable. Now, one of the things I want you to watch here is dust or lack of dust, dust control on this dust pickup is really, really, really good, which is great because we're about to do a lot of cotton and make a lot of dust. Next step on a full set of dovetails. This cord can come out, bring the stop back and play, cut the other end of this board, cut the other pieces. What I'm going to do next is I'm going to change from our dovetail bit to a straight bit. And then we will look at using this to cut our pins and sockets. What I did is I changed the bit and then I did do a test cut before you got here. So what we're doing in this case is we are riding on the outside now of the templates. So with the straight bit, that's what's going to give us pins and sockets and then we'll talk in a second more about the vertical position of these templates is then what controls, customizing the fit of the pins and sockets. So let me get my last one done and then we'll come back and have another look at that idea. One thing I want to point out is that with these templates, these are panner routers version two templates. If you have the version three s they look like this but different, they're simply going to sit on the template holder upside down from what you see here. But the concept is the same. I've said a couple of times. What is cool about the folks at pan router is they keep making this easier and easier and easier to get your set up, right? To get things to work, right? So one thing that's worth pointing out is a micro adjust, which is here. So what that's going to let me do is very finitely control the vertical position of the dove tail templates. And again, that's what controls. That's what lets me finesse the fit of my pins and sockets against the tails by moving those up and down in small increments. And that micro adjust makes that really easy to do at this stage of the game. Again, like we talked about with the tails, what one would probably do is take this out, bring your stop back, flip this around, cut the other end. That's what we're after. So again, a lot of cool stuff going on here. Variable space dovetails finger joints, Morson And it's important to understand that there are lots and lots of different joints that you can do with the Panter router. And the key here is understanding the concept of how the templates follow with the follower, how the templates work with the follower in order for the router bit to make the joint that you're choosing to make a lot of great thought has gone into this machine to make setup straightforward and based less on measuring more just on gauging your pieces. And that makes set up really simple, cool tool. It's ingenious. Absolutely. Mind boggling innovation. And it's one of the things I really like about it, you know, variable space dovetails are one way where we can get this to adapt to our work rather than trying to adapt our work to what the tool is gonna do. Um And I believe you're in your hot little hands. I love this example. And you know, if you're gonna do a three more antenna, why not make it like show off a little bit? Yeah. So it's, there's so many benefits that the pan router brings to your joinery to your woodworking and, and I got to say again, the effectiveness of the dust collection on this tool is absolutely incredible. It misses very, very, very little and um huge, huge benefit right there. Yeah, that's a great feature. I, I love when, when toolmakers really think that through and get it right? Another showcase in the Can, Paul. Did you have fun? I had fun. I've got a lot of good ideas to take back to my shop. Cool. And that's part of this is getting those ideas out in front of people so that they can maybe take them back to their shop too. Take them back to the shop and go shopping because you can never have enough tools. Thanks so much for watching.