Friday, September 23, 2011

Router Table

My newest addition to my shop is a long awaited and much needed router table. It took me about three days from start to finish and I feel it turned out pretty good. Well, it's accurate and it works considerably well. I'm not much for babbling on so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.


Here's the table. I replaced my table saw's old extension with a piece of 3/4" birch plywood faced with some 1/8" hardboard. The table has my Craftsman 1 1/2 hp router mounted to a piece of  3/8" plexiglass. Plexiglass wasn't my first choice for the router insert plate, but it does seem pretty sturdy. The fence is mounted to my table saws fence and is boxlike in shape and has a channel to connect a vacuum for dust collection. The front fences are adjustable for different size bits. I made a slot in the table for my miter gauge and installed and adjustable feather board.

Here's a pic of the fence. Part of the top pops off so you can access the dust chute to clear any chips and to adjust the wing nuts which hold the adjustable fences.

The other end also has a empty cavity so you can adjust the wing nuts. The design suggested I make a lid and store my router bits there. I store mine differently so I used this as a place for my table saw pushstick, this way it's always handy.


The router plate has removable inserts for the center depending on the size of bit I'm using. The blue tape you see was so the insert would be flush with the plate. It was just a tad low. This arrangement is temporary, since I plan to buy a store bought router plate with inserts in the future. But, we'll see.

So in the end, I have a really nice setup which greatly increases the usefulness of my router. Hopefully this will last awhile. Thanks for looking!

2 comments:

  1. You understand that you simply would require the router table if you're working with bigger components of wood that you must hold on to as long as you're cutting them if you are using your router. With the table, you can be sure fewer vibrations may appear and in the actual act, you will achieve a much thoroughly clean cut than what you may be expecting to obtain.
    http://sharewoodworking.com/kreg/kreg-prs1040/

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