Router Table Project
I got the urge to buy a router this winter. It's one tool I never learned how to use growing up. A router is an incredibly versatile tool.
After I bought the router, I needed a project. What better project than a router table? I spent about 50 hours designing and building it.
It's not a kit. Though, I did purchase the blue anodized parts and the miter from Rockler. I found that you could not buy a table
with good features for less than $300. Most are made of cheap plastic. I ended up spending about $225 to build this one, and it has more
table area and as many features as any you can buy. The white surfaces are covered with Formica. I didn't save a lot of money, but I
sure had fun!
The holes in the fence are to hold the finger boards at varying heights and locations. The project is not quite finished in this photo.
This is the back side of the rip fence (unfinished at this point). Note the horizontal grooves. The finger boards and orange plastic guard
are held by bolts with special rectangular heads that lock into these slots. You can see two of these bolt heads close to the center of the
fence The slots mean no tools are necessary to tighten the finger boards and guard down. They tighten with the black plastic knobs
purchased from Rocker.com.
This is a closeup of the finger boards (finger boards hold the work so you don't have to). I'm proud of these. I made them from
poplar.
This is another nice feature. Most router tables don't have a provision for keeping the fence parallel to the miter track. Alignment
is essential if you are using the fence in conjunction with the miter. So, I epoxy embedded a 10" piece of angle iron into the underside
of the table. The fence has a piece of wood glued 90 degrees to it that hangs down to overlap the angle iron. You can see two nuts on the
surface of this piece. These are jamb nuts that lock socket head screws sticking through from the other side. The heads of the screws actually
run on the edge of the angle iron. They are adjustable so that the fence can be "tuned" to exactly parallel to the miter track.
The cutout for the router plate can be seen from underneath.