Router table construction

[j]

Phase 1 of the router table project started with me fitting the insert plate today.

This is the piece of worktop selected for the top

It's a sink cutout from my brother's kitchen. It's about 100x50cm, a little narrow for my liking, but it's free and I'll probably replace it with some full width worktop at some point in the future. At least if I screw it up it won't have cost me anything

To cut out the rebate I used the freud with a 1/2 inch straight cut bit against a straight edge clamped to the worktop. Cutting right to left in the picture so that the rotation keeps the router tight to the straight edge.


Here is the completed rebate, next time i'll mark it with a darker pen so that it's easier to see where I'm supposed to stop on the corners


Next, drill a hole in one corner and cut it out, remembering that the rebate area is the bit you need, the middle bit is the waste.


Now, the moment of truth, try the router plate for size.
Hmm, it doesn't quite look right. The plate is a bit high.


No worries, this I knew this rebate plane from ebay would come in handy one day.

A little tweaking with the rebate plane and not forgetting to clean out the corners where it can't reach, and it fits quite nicely.
I actually over did it with the rebate plane, so my plate is slightly low, but i'm sure i'll be able to shim that when it comes to fitting the router.

I forgot to take a picture of the nicely fitting plate

Tomorrow I'll be fitting the router to the plate, and hopefully start on the fence.

Comments welcome
J

 

[Waka]

J

Good work to date, keep the wip's coming.

 

[dedee]

J,
not sure the colour is to my liking for kitchen or workshop :lol: But I am sure it will do the job. Will this really be a table or will a more conventional cabinet be constructed?

Andy

 

[spadge]

Hi,

Ron Fox shows a simple and failsafe method of cutting out a worktop for the router plate insert. All you need is some straight bits of MDF and some double sided tape. Its on the Wealden site at:

http://www.wealdentool.com/acatalog/rou ... _tips.html

Realise you have already done it but might be helpful to other readers.

Cheers

 

[j]

Spadge,
I'd seen that, and it was my plan to follow it. But then I realised I'd need to buy a short router cutter with the bearing at the top. Didn't fancy spending any more money just yet.

Dedee,
I agree, wouldn't have been my first choice, but beggers can't be choosers
And it does actually look nice in my brother's kitchen.
At the moment it's just going to be a top that I put on my workmate.
If I decide that the top is good enough for me, I'll build some kind of cabinet. If I decide it's to small or the colour is all wrong, i'll find some more worktop and build a bigger one.

Today i'll be mounting the router, and starting the fence.

Thanks
J

 

[spadge]

J

Yes I bought the bit from Wealden (only about £12 I think) but realised I could have used a guidebush and straight bit and adjusted the position of the four guide "sticks" to take account of the offset between the cutter and bush.
What I liked was the fact that with his method you cannot overshot the corners or make the opening too big.
It's truely failsafe and when you make as many mistakes as me thats a big help!

Cheers

 

[j]

Not much progress today, mounting the router on the plate is proving to be a little tricky.

First off, I tried to remove the plastic sub base from the freud, but it looks like it's riveted onto the router. So to make a template I stuck paper over the base and marked where the mounting holes were. I used the paper as a template to mark out a piece of wood as a trial run. This worked OK with a little tweaking of one hole.

I then used this wooden template to mark out the insert plate. This is the stage i'm at now. Unfortunately, the insert plate has holes already drilled for a lead in pin, and one of these just happens to half line up with one of my mounting holes. AARRGGHH.

I've decided not to take some time to think about it instead of ruining my insert plate.

As far as I can tell, my only option is to mount the router rotated about the collet center so that the mounting holes don't get in the way of the lead in pin hole. This means the flat side of the router will not be paralell to the edge of the router plate. I guess this is not too much of an issue, unless i'm missing something.

If anyone has the combination of Freud FT2000 and rouseau router plate, what did you do differently?

Also, does anyone know if B&Q will stock machine screws? I've found a bolt that fits into the router mounting hole, but I've no idea what size it is, i'll take it (and the nut that goes with it) to some DIY type places and see if I can find a suitable machine screw.

Thanks
J

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Hi j,
I have both, but the sub base was screwed on and by taking this off I was able to line up for the holes, as you know that the rear of the plate has circles for lining up and was well clear of the lead in pin.

Looking from the front of the table, heres where I lined mine up with the power switch on the left within easy access.



.

I did not go with the flat side parallel
with the plate, I don't think you need too or can someone tell me different.

Try ebay for machine screws.

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Brrr, Just came in from the shed after checking on this before posting this pic.

.

As I was worried that the left hand screw was not the same distance from center as the right hand is, but, the top right screw (not shown) is the same distance as the r/h is and take it from me it is centered.

BTW The flat side is to the top left side.

Cant remember if the machine screws where M8 or M10

Hope this helps. :wink:

 

[j]

A quick visit to B&Q with my sample bolt got me the correct thread machine screw. It was an M6, unfortunately the ones they had were a little long so I had to cut them down to about 20mm, cutting bolts is not as easy as I first thought, next time don't bother, just buy the correct size Also, if you do buy stuff from B&Q, check it's what it says it is.
These all came from the same pack


To give me a center reference on my template, I bolted it to the router and plunged a straight bit through it.
Next I fitted the guide bush to the router and wraped it in tape so that it fit the smallest ring on the insert plate. This made sure that it was centered.
So now I had the router with the insert plate on it, and the template on top of that. I could now rotate the template and be sure it was centered on the bit. I rotated it and made sure that the mounting holes didn't clash with any other holes already in the insert plate. The I simply drilled and counter sunk the holes. One hole was slightly out so I had to elongate this a little, no big deal.

Out of interest, are there different standards of countersink angle? I have a couple of different bits that are different angles, I picked one that looked close to the angle on the bolt head, but it's not exactly the same.

After all this, I found that the router doesn't fit between the workmate jaws I'll have to make some new jaws for it to fit around
Anyway, here's a picture of the completed top.


And here's one where you can see the router rotated relative to the plate.


Now my holidays are over, progress will slow down. Once I get the new workmate jaws done i'll move onto the fence.

 

[Alf]

...cutting bolts is not as easy as I first thought

Sharp hacksaw blade helps. Also you know the trick of threading on a nut first, between the head and where you're going to cut? Then you can clean up the end with a file and the action of removing the nut will finish off the job and leave the threads tidy.

Out of interest, are there different standards of countersink angle? I have a couple of different bits that are different angles, I picked one that looked close to the angle on the bolt head, but it's not exactly the same.

90° and 82° - metric machine screws are always 90° these days I think (maybe always for all I know).

Cheers, Alf

 

[llangatwgnedd]

What a relief, :? top two screws are the same distance from the red ring where as the bottom screw is stepped further back. :shock:

Looking forward for pictures of the fence, I bought a ready made one, more money than sense

 

[j]

Yes, the mounting screws are not symetrical to the router bit. But the bit is centered in the ring. very confusing

I think I'll be making the fence pretty much to the specs on the wealdon website. I'll see what wood I have lying around, the first attempt will not be perfect, but it's all good experience.

Thanks
J