Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Router Table

The Craftsman router table I picked up at a garage sale had an iron top with no real way to mount my router, it probably was designed around some Craftsman router that can be adjusted easily without needing to remove the router. That's probably why it was for sale! The base table is made from salvaged lumber from a headboard. The router table top is just a 3/4" plywood board, replacement for the iron. I routed out a spot to set the router, and a couple of slots to mount the fence. The legs needed a few scraps of wood to screw into, the holes at the tops are horizontal, so they screw into the scraps, then the scraps screw into the top. The wing brackets needed a few new holes, originally they sat a bit higher, because the old table wings were thin sheet, but the center table was cast with ribs that made it thicker. With the new holes they match flush to the top, and the angle of the legs is still the same. Drilled holes on the ends for a screw as well. My router didn't come with a mounting plate, so I glued two pieces of 1/8" Plexiglass together, one of the sheets got a bit of starring where the glue was, I'm not sure if this was a chemical reaction to solvents in the glue, or if it was stress from shrinkage, it seems to be fine structurally, I'll just have to keep an eye on it if it worsens. Hopefully I'll figure lots of ways to put the router table to good use.

1 comment:

Richard C. Lambert said...

This started as a rabbit hutch for my daughter. I built it, my daughter loved it, the rabbit loved it. A month or so latter, the rabbit died. My daughter didn't want another rabbit (yet), so the hutch sat empty. Instead of selling it (for a loss more than likely), I decided to turn it into a router table.Denny Kinchen