Thread: Commercial Router Table Choice

Hey there</SPAN>

I’m looking for some advice which I’ve seen has been through the router forum quite a few times but mine has a slight twist.</SPAN>

I’m in the middle of renovating all the doors and windows (eg recycling what I can salvage as it appears that they have not had much love and abused over the year) which mostly means building from scratch. My unit is a part of an 1890’s building so all windows are large sash windows and the doors wooden panel or half wooden panel and glass. I want to do the right thing by bringing all the wooden fittings and fixtures back to their original glory, my end goal is to have them in a state they can be varnished and show the beauty of the wood underneath.</SPAN>

Anyone to start me on this journey I managed to pick up a load of second hand triton kit MK3 work centres, an RTA300, large extension table, dust collector bucket and a new multi stand. I’ve been having great success with the table saw setup by using a 9 ½” hitachi circular saw, easy to adjust to ensure a true cut. I also managed to pick up a nice heavy Ryobi 2100W Router which is proving to be heavy but very reliable (albeit not easy to adjust does to weight and the springs, I haven’t tried the spring removal method I’ve read about but I’ll get to that later). </SPAN>

All of my router on the RTA300 has been sub standard to date, in the early days due to my ignorance but after much experimenting and book reading (Bill Hylton’s Ultimate Router Guide was extremely useful). Even after applying all the tricks my book work gave things were just not right and then I worked out the MDF fence faces were warped so I replaced them (OEM from the UK, fantastic gentlemen that appears have every Triton spare known to man) but it happened again and I realised that the RTA300 guard was the root cause of the fence face issue. I fixed this issue by removing the guard which is not great from a safety perspective. I spent hours and hours truing up the fence to the router blade and would regularly take everything to bits and remaking in the vague hope that I might hit pay dirt eg accurately routed wood. I took advice that it could be the, not so strong fingers that come with the RTA300 so I created a series of featherboards from maple and clamped them to the fence and router table (I have to admit featherboards are fantastic but it was a shame I couldn’t create them so they could fit in a t-slot as the RTA doesn’t have them. Even have measuring everything to perfection (multiple times) and having the correct setting on the router bit, fence and a consistent feed/pressure my profiles still showed inaccuracies and defects (I’m using Western Red Cedar as that is what the original windows are made from). If I am not mistake (after research) the most important requirement for a router table flat/solid and fence is to be true, after reading this I grabbed 1m spirit level and to be my horror found out the that both the RTA300 and the router plate have approx 1.5mm and 1mm respectively. This, I am now certain ,has been the root cause of my poor output since learning a few tips and tricks. I contacted Triton last week to request a replacement RTA300 table base and router plate but judging by the feedback I’ve seen from various forums this could be a lengthy process and since the RTA300 was bought second hand on here I don’t have a receipt I have no guarantee that I’ll even be offered a replacement. Since I have removed 2 windows over a month ago and my router table isn’t capable of accurately producing the rails or stiles I have a very very unhappy wife. I have spent a reasonable sum on equipment so far but given each replacement sash is $635 plus fitting etc and I have 8 more to complete I can justify flogging all my RTA300 related equipment (I won’t be swapping out my multi stand, ever) and purchasing a pre-built cast iron top router table. I have one big issue related to space and storing the table as I will have to drag it out into my parking spot at the back of my ground floor unit, I know the cast iron router tables are 60+kgs but I have 2 teenage sons who will help carry it in/out on weekends when I work. I’ve budgeted approx. $1000 for the whole table and all extras eg fence, router table, legs, height winder for router (ala my comment about the Ryobi being difficult to manage), maybe a mortise/tenon jig. I’d be interested to hear what you think would be the best bang for buck considering I won’t have the time to create my own router table. I’d ideally like to have cast iron table top and an Incra wonder fence but I fear that might blow the budget?</SPAN>

Here are 2 from carbetec</SPAN>
Carba-Tec® Router Table w/ Tenoning Attachment : CARBA-TEC (I prefer this one for the tenon jig and replaceable router plate, eg I could potentially add the height winder there)</SPAN>
Carba-Tec® Cast Iron Top Router Table : CARBA-TEC downside no jig or interchangeable router plate.</SPAN>

Kreg® Precision Router Table : CARBA-TEC the Kregs look good but I’d prefer cast iron and all the great peripherals seems very expensive</SPAN>

Once I’ve finished all the renovations then my first project will be to build my own router table set up and sell my commercial one J</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN>

Any and all guidance, comments and thoughts would be gratefully accepted.</SPAN>

Many thanks in advance

Steve