Thread: Sherwood cast iron router table

Originally Posted by Rudyvm

Yep that is the unit Tom, spoke to them yesterday and seems the containers have been deliverered so should have in my possession next week fingers crossed.

Rudy

....good news Rudy. Would love to read your comments once you have your gear setup and running. Seems I'll have to wait a while anyway before deciding - difficult to justify the expense ATM as the money is "tight".

-Tom

Yes is a bit of an indulgance Tom, would not normally spend that much however am approaching my mid 50's and made the decision to get out of the rat race in hopefully a year or two and start making things I can sell so am "investing" in some better quality gear. Have spent the last 30 odd years working as a consultant in the construction industry which can be challenging to say the least and am looking to turn things around a bit and start enjoying what I am doing a bit more.

Will let you know how the setup goes.

Cheers,

Rudy

I have the same table with a standard router lift. Lift works fine but I'm not super happy with the router lift as it just feels a bit kludgy in use, I'll definitely be changing to a round body lift and spindle/VFD combo at some point, mainly for the noise aspect.

The table itself is really great, just the right size and solid as, although I wish it had come with fence grooves! I ended up cutting grooves in the table so I can fit a Woodpeckers fence I bought second hand. Really happy with that aspect!

Having the fence clamp directly onto the table is amazingly robust, couldn't recommend the Woodpeckers fence high enough.

cheers, Ian

Collected Friday and spend the last few days putting it all together on and off, my wife is in paralell constructing a natural pond so have been to an fro between both projects so managed to complete the installation however the test run will need to wait until next weekend. The table feels very solid and lift seems to work okay however the proof will be in the pudding when I fire up next weekend. Thought that Ikea was the world champion in providing the worst illustrative instructions ever however the instructions that came with the 8 boxes required a fair amount of interpretation and probably cost me half of the time I spent putting it all together so they now have IMO the Olympic Gold Medal for worst instructions ever

Shout out to Timbecon....love your work but some more detailed instructions would help greatly for a rank amateur like myself.

Cheers,

Rudy

Originally Posted by aarggh

I have the same table with a standard router lift. Lift works fine but I'm not super happy with the router lift as it just feels a bit kludgy in use, I'll definitely be changing to a round body lift and spindle/VFD combo at some point, mainly for the noise aspect.

The table itself is really great, just the right size and solid as, although I wish it had come with fence grooves! I ended up cutting grooves in the table so I can fit a Woodpeckers fence I bought second hand. Really happy with that aspect!

Having the fence clamp directly onto the table is amazingly robust, couldn't recommend the Woodpeckers fence high enough.

cheers, Ian

Hi aarggh. Did you buy the Sherwood table without their fence? What are the advantages of the Woodpecker fence over the Sherwood fence? Shame about the table not having a groove to accommodate other third party ones - that is a definite negative against it. I can imagine creating a groove in a cast iron table to be a task not done lightly, or do you have the phenolic table?

-Tom

Hi Tom, the Sherwood fence clamps onto rails that clamp to the sides of the table. It's probably quite fine in use I would imagine but clamping the fence directly to the table top seems a far more stable and accurate way to do it. Saws come with fences clamped to side rails similarly, but the attachments for saws appear orders of magnitude more solid. I love the Woodpeckers fence, absolutely awesome bit of kit.

Cutting the grooves in my cast iron top is really pretty trivial, I marked it out, hit it with an angle grinder and just used a file to clean up the edges. In fact when I can get around to it, I'm going to enlarge it with an ordinary 1/4" carbide router bit in my router as cast iron machines really easily, it's quite different to doing steel. Light passes with a router will do the job just fine with even a smallish router. You just have to be really careful where the dust goes though. A strong fan blowing across it away from you is really handy.

cheers, Ian

Hi All, have completed putting mine all together however is doing my head in as the router lift mounting plate is not flush with the table, there is a height difference of about 10 Mil or so with the plate sitting below the surface of the table.

For the life of me cannot understand what I have done wrong as think I followed the installation diagramatic to the letter, there are grub screws in the plate on the outer edge which I assume screw into the table top holes which they are perfectly aligned with so am at a loss as to what I have missed.

Am I missing a part, have I misread the instructions, is it meant to be like that ?.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as is driving me a bit batty trying to resolve.

Thanks in advance,

Rudy

There are six grub screws installed along the edges of the mount plate to ensure a perfectly level fit on the lip of the router table underneath it.

I assume you have used this step from their website although I would expect that there would only need to be a slight adjustment, not 10mm. Having said that the photo on their site shows a considerably deeper recess in the table compared to the 6mm top plate on the router lift.

Router lift.JPG

The screws inside the table tops rebate are to set the height, the small grub screws in the plate are to fine adjust the level.

It's a bit trial and error adjusting the table screws, the plate screws, and the grubscrews all in tandem.

cheers, Ian

Hi Dallas and Ian,

Thank you both for the responses.

The grub screws on the edge of the mounting plate clearly line up with the screw holes in the table top rebate so just assumed they were there for stability so just screwed in, the diagramatic installation instructions dont clearly articulate that you need to intsall extra screws into those holes to get to near level and then micro adjust with the grub screws.

Fortunately people cleverer than me have figured it out which has saved me a lot of heartache.

Was wondering why it was that I had 6 extra screws left over and now I know why, am calling it an Ikea moment !.

Is now all complete and have done a test run planing some old turpentine and worked a treat, am quite pleased however will need to work it a bit harder to be able to give a proper appraisal.

Thanks again for your responses, this forum and the knowledge and preparadness to share is fantasitc and has really saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Cheers,

Rudy