The tool I love the most in the wood workshop is the router. But I wanted to improve my router, and so I asked Roger Garand (the master of getting amazing things done in my shop), to make some modifications. Here’s what he’s accomplished so far.
He bought an old metal table saw on Kijiji, to discard everything except its flat table surface. I wanted an Iron surface so that magnets could stick to it. He took that iron tabletop to our local machine shop, ( “Camrose Machine & Welding”- are fantastic ), who made a piece to fill-in the oval hole where the sawblade used to be. Roger sanded the rust off of everything, filled the cracks with epoxy, and put the metal tabletop onto the router cabinet.
Another thing the machine shop did, was drill holes to allow us to mount a “power router lift” device under the table. This is amazing. It’s a unique product from MLCS woodworking. Follow that link to see a video of what it does.
Here’s a few more pictures of our new router table, so far. Notice the magnetic “Magswitch”s ( yellow with black knobs ). These allow me to put the wooden router fence at any angle on the tabletop.
A video explaining Magswitch technology is here. It saves a lot of time.
Those deep grooves in the iron tabletop are tracks for guiding a pushing device called a mitre gauge. The amazing benefit of being able to place my side fence at any angle, means I can push wood into my router bit in straight lines, parallel or perpendicular to the guide slots (called T-slot), OR, at at any angle, so my router could cut at angles that converge or diverge away from a straight edge. ( Simple routers only cut parallel to straight-edge fence or T-slot).
We still have more things to improve on this router. The wood fence that you see, we will keep and use for quick easy straight edge projects. But I also have an Incra micro-adjustable fence, similar to this picture:
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I want to get a MagSwitch setup with this alternate fence, because it lets the side fence be dialed inward or outward in 1/1000th of an inch increments… accuracy that you can’t eyeball or achieve with your bare fingers.
Lastly, here’s a picture of my scroll saw. I’ve only used it once so far, but it’s a wonderful addition to the shop.
And Roger and Denise are also currently working on this little cabinet with sliding drawers, to hold all of Roger’s cases full of different kinds of screws.
January 29, 2013 update. Now there’s steel on the side fences of the router, so magswitch featherboard, or magnetic stops will stick onto it.
And here’s that cabinet for screws, finished.
March 29, 2013 update. I wanted to add this picture of the new extended table for the mitre saw. Thanks Roger.