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After a fair amount of procrastinating, I have completed the construction of my new router table complete with a homemade router lift.

The router table plan was obtained from plans now and was fairly straightforward. Of course, some deviations had to be made to the original plan. The top is 3/4" thicker than the plan asks. The extra thickness adds a level of rigidity and additional weight to the top of the router table. Rather than using angled aluminum for the backing of the fence, I opted to build the fence from oak. The aluminum angle that I could find was not square and would not have been optimal for use in the fence.

The main body of the router cabinet and base cabinet is made of 3/4" cabinet grade pine plywood. It was cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, at $35 a sheet. However, the veneer was paper thin, so in the big scheme of things, the $15 savings was not worth it. I think it will hold up well, but you just can't sand it.

The router top is built up of two pieces of 3/4" plywood sandwiched between 1/8" masonite and covered in formica. The plywood and masonite was banded in pine before the formica was glued in place. The top has a combination t-track and miter gauge track built in.

The router lift is made of some left over hickory and laminated plywood. This plan was taken straight from shop notes and required little to no modification to fit my needs. One change I made was to drill and tap the end of the threaded rod to install a set screw rather than file the end of the rod in a hex shape for use with a normal socket.

So far, I've used it a few times and the lift works great and the fence holds tightly to the table!

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That's a nice router table. It'll serve you well. I remember seeing the router lift plan in ShopNotes and I din't like the idea of filing the threaded rod for the hex socket. You figured it out better. Thanks for sharing.
 

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Nice build, I was wondering about the top. The total thickness is about 1 3/4 inches thick which would certainly make it very stable and flat but what about the height adjustment. did you find that your Router bits wouldn't protrude far enough through the table top before bottoming out. That's the problem I ran into when I built mine. I have thought about a collet extension but haven't found one yet for my Froid router.
 

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Denis,

Because the router lift is screwed directly to the bottom of the router table plate, I have full adjustability on the height of the router bits. If i care to raise the lift all the way, the collet of the router protrudes well above the router table plate. Because I have to use the spindle lock on the router to change bits in the stock collets, I do this under the table. I am considering adding a collet that I can open and close above the table such as the musclechuck, but haven't decided if it's worth dropping that much money on at this time. If you would like, I can take some additional pictures under the router table showing how the router lift is attached to the plate and the full raise and lower positions of the router.

Thanks,

Chris
 

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what issue of shop notes was this in?
 

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Very Nice Project Indeed! Beautiful Work! Thanks For Posting!

Rick
 
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