Anyone have a cheap source for 3/8 in. phenolic sheets sutable for making router table inserts. It seems that $35 is the going rate for precuts at woodworking sites and $36 sq ft at plastic suppliers is the best I can do.
The plastics supplier I deal with in my area has a scrap bin. These cut-offs are sold by the pound. I've been able to find pieces large enough to make my inserts from these scraps.
When you say precut, are you talking about rounded corners and holes drilled, or just cut to the overall rectangular size? I just called a buddy of mine who works for AIN Plastics. There's a $75 minimum, and they'd charge you for a 12" x 12" piece, but the price per, forgetting the minimum, is about seven or eight bucks for a square blank of 3/8" paper based phenolic. Canvas based is more. So if you bought ten of them to cover the minimum, maybe sell some to your buddies, that's fairly reasonable.
Here's a guy selling sheet on eBay:
Lee Valley wants $32.50 for a 16x24 sheet of 1/4".
I've had this in my table for a year now with no sagging, although I did make the cutout for the router as small as possible to maximise support for the insert.
Chris
If you can make do with 1/2", corian sink cutouts ought to be cheap. I got a big pile of them for free last year. I just made a router table out of a large sheet of corian, and it has been fine so far; should work for a insert.
Buy it from somewhere like McMaster-Carr
John
I was talking about the blank round cornered precuts. Do you know if typical plates you buy from woodworking suppliers are paper or canvas based?
On 3/10/2006 1:25 PM Toller mumbled something about the following:
I've just been told about a huge piece of corian at one of our offices that they are throwing out. I told them to hold on to it, I'll be there next week to pick it up. It's a pretty good size chunk and kinda awkward shape, but I think I can get me a decent router table out of a piece of it.
I went to my local glass company and they gave me some 3/8" Lexan scraps for nothing. They make great custom router bases. Bugs
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