For many years I coped reasonably well with a Triton RTA300 router table with all the bells, whistles and available attachments, but wasn't really happy as it still required ducking underneath to adjust the height and it was never truly flat. Plus it was very difficult to adapt commercially available attachments such as featherboards, precision mitre gauges or tenoning attachments. It was however just good enough to do 95% of what I wanted and so I stuck with it.

Then a couple of years ago I picked up an older style Jessem Routerlift which was the catalyst to sell off the Triton and build what I wanted. So the Triton went to auction and left me with a router table-shaped hole in the shed begging to be filled. And then life intruded along with a multitude of house projects that eliminated the majority of personal shed time....

Finally the major(-ish) houseworks were finished (again; -ish!) allowing me to establish my outdoor workshop; first cab off the rank was my outdoor workbench followed by my lathe stand and finally my router table. Same as the lathe stand it needed to be on wheels to move from storage in the shed for use in the workshop.

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The top, fence, fence adjusters, mitre gauge, switch and sliding sled came from Timbecon and Carbatec thanks to some sales back in January. The cabinet is made from formply with a wooden base where the castors attach. The top required altering as the older style Jessem is nearly two inches longer than standard router insert plates. It is also fitted "backwards" so that the router is more central in the table and the height winder now sits behind the fence; this gives me more scope for performing cuts where the fence is well behind the cutter. Spinning it round the other way takes only a few minutes if ever required.

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The big drawer was repurposed from the kitchen when I replaced my single oven with a double; it stores a couple of extra routers, featherboards and other oddments.

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There are four side drawers; these are being used to hold cutters, router fences and the table mitre gauge. I wanted to avoid wasting as little storage space as possible and things like fences are a real PITA when they accumulate in cupboards and drawers.


The only thing to finish off is the dust extraction; the fence has a port at the rear to take a 2-1/2" hose but I also want to integrate the built-in port on the installed TRA001 router. This will simply require adding a hole in the back for the smaller hose to come out and joining the two together into a common suction line.

Let's see; workbench + lathe + router table built; bandsaw, jointer, disc-and-belt sander mounted on wheels and a stand built for the thicky.... when I'm home again in July I think I need to make my piles of QLD Redgum and American white oak slightly less plank-shaped...