On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:02:12 -0500, Tom Banes
wrote:

Botched a quicky piece this weekend and trying to figure out if
there's a fix.

Wandered by my local purveyor of curly wood Saturday. Searching
through the scrap pile when one of the folks working there guided me
to three hunks (flitches) of maple. Seems he was a fiddle/guitar
maker. He said these 24" X 6-8" X 1" would finish up really nice for
small work. WTH, $10 for 3 pieces.

Nice drive-by gloat.

Planed off one Sunday AM and he was right - pretty wood. Decided a
quick rout to make a free hand nut tray would work. Only carbide
straight bit I had was a ?? old 1/2 incher from Sears. Not burned -
but.

FWIW, that's a nice enough hunk of maple that it may be worth it to
just buy another, higher-quality bit and just carefully take a little
more off with that. If it was some kind of oddball bit, it might not
be worthwhile, but a straight one is always useful. You could sand
it, I'm sure, but it'd be tough and not likely to look as good as a
really nice finishing pass with the router.