I'm in the market for a router table. I've got a Makita 3612C router and want a table to match. Quality is more important than price.
Opinions on the Trend Pro table, Makita P-66226 table, and Record Power RPMS-R table please. Other suggestins welcome but portability is also essential.
Thanks
If you are up for making one, you can buy the inserts, accessories and mechanisms from places such as Axminster Tools or Rutlands and design what you want in terms of size.
The ready made ones usually need to be fitted to some arrangement to make the table the right height for work and you may also want to have larger infeed and outfeed arrangements.
If you want to go this way, then the CMT one is reasonable from Axminster and the Jessem systems from Rutlands.
Charnwood Machinery do some really good stuff and from personal experience their after sales service is 100%.
Thanks Andy and The Medway Handyman. I find I'm better informed but no closer to a decision. Instead of three brands to choose from I now have five! I haven't really got the time to make my own as I really need one next week and I anticipate using it fairly frequently over the next few years.
I'm also considering buying a table saw, maybe a DW744, and have noticed that it is possible to buy a router table attachment for this saw
Hmm... interesting idea.
Certainly if you want something that can be folded up and put away, the concept seems good, especially as you can get infeed and outfeed tables.
The thing I am not so certain about is the saw mounting and fence that is part of the Rousseau frame. For most of the low end table saw types mentioned by them, the supplied fence is crap. Basically, the front mount and fence are flimsy and they are marginally saved by having a clamp arrangement, use is a pain. Basically, every single cut requires a check of fence to blade distance by direct measurement as well as a check that the fence is parallel to the blade.
I have one of the DW744 saws that you mention, and they are at the high end of the portable site saw market. The fence is quite respectable in the sense that there is a toothed rack along the front and back and pinions on the fence that engage with it. The fence itself is firm and remains parallel to the blade. There are some basic infeed and outfeed tables, but they are probably the weakest point of the product.
It's not completely clear to me what becomes of the saw's own fence when the saw is mounted into the Rousseau table. On the DW744, the fence does easily unclip, so I expect that the intent is that one uses the Rousseau fence. There are better illustrations with a Bosch saw installed for the 2775 model.
So the obvious question becomes one of how good is Rousseau's fence? The photos suggest a magnified scale and a reasonably substantial lever at the front but there's nothing about the arrangement for the back. Larger table saws get around this problem by having a very substantial front rail and equally substantial rip fence such that there is no need for rear attachment. This fence may be strong enough with just a front mounting. For fairly small workpieces, probably true. The challenge may come if one is using the extension tables and trying to cut large sheets. then the fence may be deformed during cutting.
Having said all of that, the concept of what Rousseau has done here is quite attractive especially as you can add the other tables. As long as they are substantial enough, one of the primary weaknesses of these small table saws - not enough table area - is overcome.
So, if one of your main objectives is to have something that is semi-portable and can be packed away to save space, this is an appealing approach, I think.
If space and portability are not so critical, then going for a larger table saw with cast iron top or even a combined saw and spindle moulder can be a better bet. People have fitted router tables to saw tables and taken advantage of the table area and fence, for example. Here you are talking about starting prices in the £1k+ range though. However, if you think about all the parts needed to buy and build up a portable setup, it can get to this quite easily.
At one point, the DW744 was my main table saw. Nowadays, I have a much larger combination machine (Felder 731) and so the DW gets less use. Nonetheless, it is useful to take to other places that I am doing work.
If I were using the DW now as my main saw and portability were an issue, I would certainly take a good look at Rousseau's offerings, but I think I would want to go and look for myself. I haven't seen them advertised in the UK, only in the U.S., so I am not sure that they are imported through distribution channels here. That isn't a particular problem because one can easily import from a supplier in the U.S. If nothing else, there is Woodcraft who will do shipments. At $2 to the £ this is attractive, but with this type of product, the killer becomes shipping costs due to weight and size. It can be economically viable to order the goods at an East Coast supplier, buy a cheap plane ticket and go and collect if you are buying enough stuff.
I think the OP should decide early on whether the ability to deal with
2440x1220 sheet materials is important. If you're prepared to have them cut by the suppliers (not all of whom are useless), your workshop can be smaller and you can get on with the interesting bits.
It may not be necessary to deal with 2440x1220 sheet materials, but it may well be necessary to deal with 2000 x 300 or 600 when building some items. From the support and handling perspective this is almost as difficult as handling the full sheets.
Secondly, while the DIY sheds may offer cutting services of a kind, the suppliers of (e.g.) veneered sheet materials typically do not. Therefore, while it may not be necessary to be able to manage full sized sheets on the main saw, it is usually necessary to have some means available to cut one's own full sized sheets - even if this involves some saw horses, a guide rail and a good quality circular saw used outside.
Andy Hall wrote: snip
Portability is, for me, essential. The saw and router will be used exclusively on site for the time being and storage capacity is limited.
I'm not really keen on buying from the US both because of the obviously high shipping costs, even though Amazon will ship a DW744 for $170, but also because of possible warranty issues and, as you mentioned, the impossibility of investigating before purchase.
The DW744 has several competitors and I have several Makita tools which are very good but I haven't seen a way of fitting a router to the Makita table saw.
This leads me to investigate the possibility of other multi function tools but while I've been able to find what appear to be decent tools, the Record Power Maxi26 for example, they are no longer portable.
Oh, and I've found ANOTHER candidate for the router table: This one's from Fox and has a cast iron table and a sliding carriage and looks like good value at £240
I used to run an inch and a quarter 3Ph. spindle moulder, so these dinky pressed metal benches are not to my taste. Now I prefer to make up my own tables for whatever I have going at the time. See my page
for a quick and easy table for using a router to edge 2400 MDF sheets. It's a bit on the rough side and not what the OP wants, so he might be interested this guys stuff.
This guy looks to be a perfectionist and he makes some good gear.
I actually imported mine from the U.S.; a) because of the price difference and b) because it has a long arbor which will accept a stacked dado set. The European models won't. That is less of an issue now because I can run dado tooling on the large table saw anyway.
I did check spares by comparison item by item. Apart from the arbor, the motor is different at 110v (solved with site transformer) and a switch. All other parts are the same and can be sourced in the UK. For U.S. parts, you can buy from Grainger and they will ship to Europe. Warranty is U.S. only. I took an overall view, and with the cost saving and cost of spares decided that it didn't matter forgoing that. I brought the saw back myself, following a business trip and so shipping cost was effectively zero. There was also an allowance of £145 with respect to VAT and duty, so about another £40 saved there. Altogether it was worth it.
I am not sure that you can to any of them other than via the use of something like the Rousseau stand.
No they aren't as soon as there is cast iron. Do they still make the MAXI26? I thought it was replaced by the C26.
Anyway, if you are thining of going this route, I would definitely not go entry level. Reasonable combination machines really begin at about £4k.
Interesting idea, and certainly having something solid is good. For example, I can fit a router spindle in place of the normal 30mm spindle in my Felder machine and run 6.35 and 12.7mm router cutters. There is a sliding table as well. However, even with just sliding the work on the cast iron table, I get better results than I previously did with a small Trend router table. I suspect that this may have to do with having good support for the work.
Jessem table from Rutlands. I have one, very expensive but the quality is superb, worth every penny. Put your 3612C in it on a Rout-R-Lift and you have one quality set-up.
OK that's the second recommendation for Jessem's table but at £500 it is very expensive. I'm still thinking of a portable table and the large folding Rousseau one looked good until I discovered that nobody appears to sell it in he UK. The rout-R-lift looks good though.
Further research has shown that Charnwood, Record Power, Fox and Ryobi all make a VERY similar table with a cast iron top and a sliding carriage. Pries vary from £250 to £350 and include/exclude a nvr switch, collet extension, gas struts, or other 'optional' extra.
Smaller 'benchtop' tables have been ruled out as too unstable for making skirting /architrave.
Decision still unmade as requirement has been delayed by new kitchen window turning up early and needing fitting.
Are you going to do a fair amount of this?
To be honest, if you are planning to do a lot of skirting, architrave and other largeish sized items you are getting into spindle moulder territory. By the time you have bought a decent 12.7mm router and the table, you are going to be into over £500. That's about two thirds of the way to a basic spindle moulder which would give better results
Yes, I understand. The problem is that I'm restoring an old listed building and have to make enough architrave for a couple of doors and enough skirting for a couple of rooms.
At present we are living in the 'project' to avoid capital gains tax and have nowhere to set up a workshop so portable/moveable tools are for the time being essential.
And this is the primary dilemma; if I could set up workshop I'd seriously consider a spindle moulder, and I don't really want to spend a lot of money on a machine which might be superceded in the future, neither do I want to buy something which won't meet my present requirements.
I already have a Makita router which is, to be honest too heavy for doing stuff like cupboard door hinges so would be happy to have it fixed to a table and buy a smaller router for light jobs.
I have exactly the same problems choosing a table saw too!
Ah. Now it's clearer.
If the volumes are that small, another option to consider would be to get spindle moulder tooling made and then get the timber run by a joinery firm or someone with a machine.
The typical cutters that are used in universal blocks are quite inexpensive to get made (£30 or so depending on complexity) and you would have a precise match.
Matching with router cutters is rather more challenging.
That's not a bad idea. My concern in twofold. Firstly I like to do these things myself and secondly one never know what the future will hold. I've just made a large kitchen unit from an old school science bench top and five doors that I found in an antiques shop that just happened to be the right height and width, but next time I might have to make them myself which might require more tooling.
In this case the ones I need are easily available as the house was made with simple tools: a rounded bead for the architrave and the same in a larger scale for the skirting.
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