On Board with Mark Corke

Winter project - router table

Here in New England the winters can feel awfully long but the upside is that it gives me plenty of time to work on boat projects. There is always varnishing and painting to be done and a plethora of other small jobs to get the boat ready for the coming season even if that is a long way off at this point.
Although I have pretty well equipped workshop I am still trying to get it to the place where I want it to be, allowing projects to run more smoothly. One of the things that don't have or rather didn't have until today was a router table. I do have a shaper but for machining small delicate moldings and other bits of woodworking trim it is overkill, a router is better. I rummaged around the workshop and cobbled together the result that you see here. You can click on the pictures for a larger, much clearer view.

It may be pretty hard to see in the picture but the top is made from some 6mm thick Plexiglas. I cut the Plexiglas the width of my work bench that sits in the middle of my shop, it's 24 inches wide. I removed the standard base plate from the Bosch router and remounted it in the middle of the Plexiglas with the original four small baseplate mounting screws. My bench top is made from a solid core door which is heavy and flat but to accommodate the router body I cut a 12 inch diameter hole with a jigsaw.
As you can see I made a  fence from a couple of scraps of wood, carefully screwed together at right angles. If you make one like mine make certain that the fence is at right angles to the table surface, any discrepancy will show up the work that you produce and will lead to frustration. At this point the fence is adjusted and held in the desired position with clamps which work well enough but I shall probably add a more engineered solution is due course.

With the fence removed working small pieces with a bearing guided cutter is a snap.

I would never had dared do this on the shaper, well not if I wanted to keep all my fingers anyway!

Just so that you can get a better idea of how I did it here is view looking up from under the table. One final point that I should mention is that changing the cutters on router tables can be a pain. With this particular Bosch model the motor can be released from the body by undoing an over center clamp thus enabling the cutters to be changed on the bench top with ease.

All in all an afternoon in the workshop well spent, I'd say.

 

 

Welcome

This is my new blog which is all about building, maintaining and upgrading boats. The about me page gives a little more information but I have always had a fascination or what my wife would call an obsession with boats. I've built a lot of boats worked on hundreds more and do all my own maintenance. In the days, weeks and months that follow I will bring you projects, ideas and inspiration that you can use on your own boat. I am a full time writer, photographer and boat surveyor and was until recently senior editor at Sail and deputy editor of the now sadly defunct and greatly missed Boatworks magazine.
I look forward to receiving your feedback, comments, ideas and constructive criticisms.