Thread: Router Table Upgrade

Totally agree with Chris.

I was talking with my son this morning, who loves to pun and play on words. He bought me a 1/4 sized book for christmas which is titled something like "fuc#$ng apostrophes". In it the writer takes 90 odd pages to go over every single use, non-use, reason for, exception for, and exception-to-exception for every use. At the end the author says its been tortured beyond recognition and its all a hopeless mess. It all started so the 15th century press operators could use fewer e's and used an upside down comma instead (less space and easier to make).

So, like our written language, a tool we all use has been tortured and stretched into something it is NOT. It has passed the reason for its existence and its simply laziness we arent tossing it out and "doing it properly" (like Metric. Ahem, North Americans!)

I absolutely agree with Chris. We should really just have a decent CNC spindle, a VFD that can slow-start and fast-stop a bit, and have it so it doesnt need an engineer to put it together. Then a simple shop-built lifter based on an Acme thread and bearing nut can be built.

It doesnt help the OP buy one for his school though.

(anyone notice my Oxford commas, speaking of grammar )

Ev

Originally Posted by homey

Dom,

For me it's the most used piece of equipment in the shed. I use it to cut dovetails (Gifkins jig), box joints, mitres, grooves, dadoes, inlay banding, rebates, fit hinges, flush cut to templates, create raised panels and more.

I'd hate to be without mine.

Brian

Yeah ok. I guess I just couldn't ever see a real use that isn't already covered by other tools like hand-tools for dovetails, mitres, dadoes, rebates etc as well as the table saw and dado stack if I want to use power tools, not to mention hand-routers for round-overs, dadoes (with festool track), flush-trim etc. The only time I could ever see a router table being close to necessary is for really thin stock where a hand-held router is difficult to balance or just to make things a little quicker / easier because you don't need to clamp the piece given the router is fixed in place (on these odd occasions I clamp the router in a vice and use it like a table). Maybe I'll give one a little more consideration, but i also seem to push this down on the priority list because it seems like a tool that makes life easier rather than filling a niche function that cannot be substituted by other tools.

Do you find it possible to get dust collection near-perfect on the router table? Or is it a dusty tool even with a good dust-collection setup?