Making your own router plate

[whit3rd]

(Phenolic plastic, like linen-reinforced Micarta, is a pretty good rigid choice). You can duplicate a base plate pretty easily, by chucking a dowel in your router, and using a solid-carbide router bit in a second router, with the same diameter as the dowel.

The trick is, to mount the base-plate material, form a center hole by plunge-cutting, then making a pin-router jig of router #1 with a dowel and the holed but uncut baseplate, and cut it with router #2 which has a fully-formed base plate.

You can put a collar on the dowel to guide an oversize circle cut, making a large circular baseplate.

I've done this with phenolic (to make a matching-diameter baseplate for a small router), but it should work with aluminum as well.

[Bob]

What kind of material do you prefer? 1/4 inch MDF, polycarbonate, some type of sheet metal?

Thanks.

Michael,

Give Pat Warner's site a look

and look under "Understanding Routing" and Router Table for some excellent advice and ideas. I built the fence he did an article on in FWW and it is a workhorse although it is a bit heavier than the one he shows now.

I'm just a hobbyist but two kitchen's worth of cabinet doors, drawers and moldings plus an arched panel 36"x80" (really heavy) door for a family member were all made using Pat's designed fence and some other add-on's for router work I've purchased from him.

His site is one hell of a great resource and his products are quality made - plus he's always been helpful with any questions I've had.

Bob S.

[-MIKE-]

Making jigs when I'm not woodworking. :-)

They usually end up better than store bought, you get the satisfaction of building it yourself, and you learn techniques and processes that translate to woodworking. Plus, once you have one, you make others for other tasks. I have about 5 different router plates for different task, some make from phenolic, some poly-carb, some plywood.

[teaspoonrack]

pe of sheet metal?

"Hockey glass" - several years ago, they changed the glass on our towns ice rink And I scored a couple sheets out of the dumpster - 12mm lexan(?). Rem ove the router base plate and use it for a mounting hole template. Now you can centre the hole for the bit and use the guide bushings and bits of your choice (I used the Freud FT2020 guide bushing set - these are the Porter C able style guides)to do the hole. Some careful thought and you should be ab le to jig your way through