>> I made some shelves using these. For the wood, I used pine window
Indeed. You can use the rails, or drill / route regular peg holes for the little push in shelf supports.
(a small template fixed to a router base with an indexing peg will let you plunge 1/4" holes at an exactly regular spacing - sink the first, then locate the peg in the previous hole to sink the next etc).
You might be getting mixed up with the spur style uprights and brackets used for shelving. Some folks find that a bit utilitarian.
That sort of machine is probably not an ideal "first" router (I say first since once you get the bug, more tend to follow!). Most folks tend to go for a medium sized machine in the 800 - 1200 watt range with a
1/4" collet.
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> I bought it a couple of months ago but never knew what to do with it > until now!
Yup that is quite a hefty beast...
Much depends on what sort of jobs you have planned. That one has a reasonable feature set, and gets decent reviews. Not having handled it, I can't speak of the quality, but again for a first time user that does not actually matter as such, since as you learn more you get a feel for whether its you or the tool that is the limiting factor. If it turns out the tools is not up to it, then you can always ebay it and get something better once you have more feel for what features matter to you.
You may find it a bit heavy for the lighter jobs like edge detailing, but it will do it.
It stops it slowing under load, but the flip side is it removes one of the audible clues you are over doing it with the cut depth. Probably not a problem on 1/2" cutters, but you need to take care not to snap the shaft on smaller 1/4" ones.
Indeed. My first router was a crappy B&D "Woodworker" - pretty crude, fixed speed, lousy depth lock so that any dado you cut ended up progressively shallower as you went on. However it taught me what to get next. ;-)
For cutting, a saw is indeed best.
For making a perfect mason's mitre corner joint using a corner template, then the router is king since it can precisely follow a jig or template in a way no other hand held tool can, and it can machine a "perfect" flat and square edge.
Looks like quite a good machine. Good price, and it has a micro- adjust on the depth (pet hate of mine when they don't).
Ignore the 1/4". For a router of this size and weight, use 1/2" cutters throughout - they have stiffer shanks and are more stable.
14" routers are light and handy, but this only works if they are!
You need three. A 1/2" for hacking out dadoes in big stuff on the bench (the biggest cuts of all), a 1/2" in the router table (the most useful) and a 1/4" doing the roundovers and chamfering.
Yes, because electronics is now cheaper than adequate sized field coils.
It isn't. If you over-load the cut so that this is important, all sorts of other bad stuff happens.
You need a fecking big rigid 1/2" with a stable base. Profiling worktops is a deep cut and it puts a big side load on a router.
Saws are all narrow, so they're all flexible sideways.
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