Shop furniture

[Inor]

I have needed a new 3 1/4 HP router for about 5 years. My old one is about 25 years old and for the last 4-5 years it was giving me shocks if tried to use it when not standing on a fatigue mat. Routers are one of the few things that have actually come DOWN in price, quite a bit, in the last 25 years. My old one was a Porter-Cable and I paid over $300 for it back then (when $300 was sizable amount of money). The new one was about $250! When looking at routers, I got to thinking my router table was in need of replacement too. I bought my old one at the same time I bought the router and at the time I remember thinking I would be happy if it lasted 5 years.

So a month or so ago I cashed in some gift cards my kids have been giving me for birthdays and Christmas the last couple years and got a new 3 1/4 HP router and a cast iron router table top! A top quality cast iron router table needs a proper cabinet to sit on rather than the stupid stamped-steel legs they sell for them (for WAY too much money). So I built this:

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My original plan was to make 5 drawers for it to hold the various bits, wrenches, setup blocks etc. that a router requires. But when I went to the wood store to get the oak for the face frame, I found the 100# drawers glides that I was buying for about $15 per pair are now up to over $35 per pair! So I reworked my design and got by with 2 drawers. It is not optimal, but it will work. And it is just shop furniture.

[Inor]

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The 2 best features:

1 - It has a cranker for raising and lowering the bit from the top rather than having to lift the router out and adjusting the depth with a wrench like my old one. That one will definitely save some wear and tear on my back.

2 - I rigged up an on/off paddle switch that I can turn off with my knee. About every 3 years I route off the corner of a finger and end up getting blood all over my wood, which usually ruins the wood. This way I will have my uninjured hand free to keep the blood off the wood and still be able to shut the machine off before I light into a string of cussing that peels the paint from the walls!

The whole thing weighs close to 300 pounds and it seems rock solid when I turn it on - no vibration that I can feel at all in the table top. Plus I put on top-of-the-line locking casters so I can easily move it around the shop.

If you cannot tell, this project has me REALLY excited!

The only things left to do on it are to drill the hole in the mounting plate to be able to use the cranker and to make a fence. Both of those should be really easy.

[Inor]

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[Sasquatch]

That is pretty awesome! I don't even have a router table. I do everything over the top. I'm still honing my router skills but one of those tables sure would be sweet. I might have to look into making something like that for myself.

Well done!

[White Shadow]

Nice build and that Triton router is a beast.

[Slippy]

:hail::hail::hail::hail::hail::hail:

[stevekozak]

Wow! Really nice!!

[hawgrider]

Mad skills there Mr Inor !