Router Table Fence Design

[Chris Knight]

I am with Tony here. I think it is asking for trouble to use both a mitre slot and a fence for guiding the workpiece. Short of precision engineering, you will not be able to guarantee parallelism. Besides it is unnecessary. Easiest by far is a sled running the fence or table edge.

If you want to make a sled for the mitre slot, good and well - but that's all you need if you clamp the work to the sled (which is unnecessary if you run the sled against the fence which is why I prefer that).

 

[Anonymous]

Tony,

OK, but so long as fence and mitre slot are parallel, then there is no problem. There is a safety gain too, in that more of the router bit is buried in the fence.

John,

Use your side wings to guide the fence parallel to the mitre slot. Just a thought. :wink:

Not easy to always get them exactly parallel every time though and no real advantage using both fence and mitre guide.

 

[Neomorph]

I realised what made me think using mitre gauge and fence... Norm on the table saw. He often uses both but as he has a high precision (and expensive) table saw it's safe. Getting same precision with a home built system is possible but unlikely.

Yesterday I had a weird "sleep through the day" event as I had been spending too many days with lack of sleep and it caught up. :roll: Nearly 19 hours sleep. I only woke up for a short period when Roger from Woodworkers Workshop rang up to apologise for not sending my stuff. He thought he had sent them but actually hadn't due to a computer error. Ahh well, he's only human.

I can't understand that after sleeping for 19 hours I' still tired :roll:

 

[Neomorph]

Well the bits arrived from Wood Workers Workshop

so it's a hint to me to get on and finish this pipper off but I'm still waiting for my painkillers to kick in.

My only complaint about this order is that Roger sent me a load of info on bits I'd love to buy but can't afford at the moment (don't you just hate bills month!). I've recently been on a spending spree as I didn't have to buy Sketchup and am now broke again (except for the bill money thank god!).

Time to save up again...

 

[Neomorph]

Oh god... I'm a moron.

I just realised that the adjustable outfield really was a waste of time. I was just cutting the fence pieces when I realised that if I cut a spare infield fence and then took 2mm off the face using the router that it would work just as well.

Here is how the back of the fence now looks like... a lot cleaner than what it was eh?

 

[LyNx]

You can just pack out the outfeed fence which will be easier.

Andy

 

[Neomorph]

You can just pack out the outfeed fence which will be easier.

Andy

I don't see why... I dunno where the heck I'd get the shims from plus I have the extra MDF around to make up the spare infield fence. It's only an extra piece of 490mm x 150mm x 18mm piece of MDF and I have spare piece lying around.

As you can see here it ends up being easier as packing the outfeed would mean packing both the router guard and the feather board as well.

 

[Nick W]

John,

If you cut through the face of the MDF won't that get you to the softer, inner material? Won't wear well, and probably won't slide that well either.

If it were my project, I think I'd take a break right now. Go do something else, and come back to it later. The weather is picking up - why not get into the garden?

 

[Neomorph]

John,

If you cut through the face of the MDF won't that get you to the softer, inner material? Won't wear well, and probably won't slide that well either.

If it were my project, I think I'd take a break right now. Go do something else, and come back to it later. The weather is picking up - why not get into the garden?

Oooer... Noob mode kicking in again... Softer inner material? I'm only going to remove 2mm from the face.

I'm also going to be sealing all the MDF I'm using and then coating it with several layers of Acrylic Melamine (when Axminster get it back into stock that is) and then finishing it off with a coating of clear beeswax buffed off until its shiny. Surely this will then make it slide like an ice rink. This method for turning MDF into ice rink mode was suggested by another user here as a good alternative to using laminate which is a pain to get hold of.

Oh and get into the garden... that's my workshop so I was in there cutting my bits when it began to pi... errr... rain extremely heavily so I came back inside after covering table saw and retrieving various other bits and bobs. Started off really nice too... Clear blue skies... birds singing overhead... birds crapping on my damn MDF!!! DOH!

When it comes down to it I think this damn project is sodding JINXED

 

[LyNx]

the inner core of mdf is not as dense as the outer :wink:

Personally, i would only go 1mm deep as this will reduce the strain on your router and cutters, also 2mm is alot to take off on large sections of hardwood in a single pass. Plus only 1mm deep will be just inside the denser facing of the MDF

Andy

 

[SketchUp Guru]

I haven't been following this thread (but probably should have). Neo, nice SU drawings. Looks like you're getting the hang of it. As to the adjustment for the outfeed fence, packing it out is the simplest method. A common material used here in the US is a scrap of laminate material like you would use on a countertop. If there's a shop nearby that makes kitchen counters you could probably get what you need for free. You might look around in your local stationer's (is that what you'd call an office supply store?) for some plastic sheeting that could be cut up for the use. An old CD might work although it's probably a wee bit thick.

Another thing you might consider is a thicker shim that fits in a groove in either the back of the face or in the base part of the fence. My BenchDog router table fence came with a couple of aluminum bars that are rectangular--maybe something like 1/8" x 3/16". They slip into a couple of grooves in the AL extrusion. If turned one way, they give maybe a 1/32" inch offset. If turned the other way, 1/16".

This would be quite simple to do with your fence design. If you want me to draw it in, send me the SKP.

 

[Nick W]

I think this damn project is sodding JINXED

What I was trying to hint is that you should take a break from the project entirely for a little while, working on it in the garden doesn't count [-X . It's kind of like the 'two-mistakes-in-the-workshop-equals-leave-now' rule. When I used to design sofware for a living, if I got to the state of feeling that a bit of work was just going round in circles, geting on top of me, or going down the drain, I'd either leave it and do something else for a couple of days, or give it to someone else to do (not being mean, just if it was urgent and couldn't wait). It's amazing how things become easier with a bit of distance, and incredible how allowing the brain to do its stuff in the background often results in a stroke of genius (though I say it myself ).

It's probably (no, Ok it IS) rather late to suggest this now, but why don't you build a fence to someone else's design, live with it for a while, and then design your own in the light of your likes and dislikes of the first? There's quite a good simple one on the Wealden site.

 

[Neomorph]

It's probably (no, Ok it IS) rather late to suggest this now, but why don't you build a fence to someone else's design, live with it for a while, and then design your own in the light of your likes and dislikes of the first? There's quite a good simple one on the Wealden site.

Nick... Look at the bottom pic on the Wealden page and tell me it doesn't match pretty much what I have got already. The only difference is that I'm adding the jointing function.

Dave R: The problem with packing out the outfield fence is that the featherboard and router guard will be screwed up. Now an alternative would be to use the same packing material to make the featherboard support stick out by the same amount which is another possibility. The laminate idea is out of the question because it's just too damn expensive and too difficult to get hold of in the size I want. Office supply stores in Redditch are Staples and WH Smith lol. Staple may have something but it's bound to be expensive. One thing I did come across in my shed today is a piece of 3mm glazing that I could route down to make the correct size but it means I gotta find out that design for that sled jig. If I recall it's basically 4 pieces of wood so it should be simple enough.

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Why not move the T-track out by the thickness of the packing and leave it there? It won''t make any difference if there's a couple or 3 mm space between the featherboards and gaurd and the infeed fence. That way you don't need to remember to put spacers behind everything for the times when you want it.

Again, consider putting a couple of horizontal grooves in the back of the outfeed face and then use a thicker spacer ripped from a scrap of hardwood or something.

 

[Neil]

John,

Why not just put a washer or two on each bolt, under the featherboards & router guard? This is all I do on my fence - in fact I always leave the washers in place as the featherboard doesn't need to be tight up against the fence. Shimming is definitely the easiest & most accurate way to move the outfeed fence - I use strips of worktop edging laminate as Dave suggested.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Alf]

It's amazing how things become easier with a bit of distance, and incredible how allowing the brain to do its stuff in the background often results in a stroke of genius (though I say it myself ).

'Tis true enough. My best ideas come when I'm asleep - which probably explains why my best ideas are so bad... :lol:

The thing that seems to be causing the grief is the jointing, yes? Simple then. Buy a jointer plane and forget the silly idea of using the router in the first place. :wink:

Okay, the coat's already in my hand... :roll:

Cheers, Alf

 

[Neomorph]

John,

Why not just put a washer or two on each bolt, under the featherboards & router guard? This is all I do on my fence - in fact I always leave the washers in place as the featherboard doesn't need to be tight up against the fence. Shimming is definitely the easiest & most accurate way to move the outfeed fence - I use strips of worktop edging laminate as Dave suggested.

Cheers,
Neil

Spinky... Simplest of the lot and a lot easier. Nice one.

Daves idea is also a good one. One of the reasons I started this thread was to get peoples ideas and comments to integrate into my version and it's definately improved over the last week or so. Over-engineering of my version went a bit critical at one stage and then went the other way which actually has made it better. Keep It Simple Stupid strikes again

 

[Neomorph]

The thing that seems to be causing the grief is the jointing, yes? Simple then. Buy a jointer plane and forget the silly idea of using the router in the first place. :wink:

Okay, the coat's already in my hand... :roll:

Cheers, Alf

LOL... earlier in the post I mentioned that I don't have a lot of space and even the router table is going to be a fold down jobby...

 

[Neomorph]

Why not move the T-track out by the thickness of the packing and leave it there?

Yeah that's what I meant in my earlier post. The routed down glazing would be equal to the shim so I could fix it behind the featherboard support and leave it there.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Neomorph, I have a suspicion that your router fence is getting much more complicated than it really needs to be.

More often than not, as has been alluded too by one or two others, a simple straight stick and couple of cramps will do the job of guiding the wood past the cutter quite adequately.

In my experience something as basic and as simple as this does the job perhaps 95% of the time.

It really is true that you can over-engineer and think too much about a simple tool, ha, ha. Slainte.