Buying a Router

[David W.E. Roberts]

I had bad experiences with a 'generic' Chinese made router from Homebase.

Returned two because the height stop was bent, and concluded this was a design fault - they were all shipped with the router in 'plunge' position which bent the highest stop.

These routers (many of the 'branded' ones) look like a cheap Chineese copy of an older Trend.

I finally bought a B&D router which was on special offer - paid between £30 and £40 for it IIRC.

This seems much better engineered and has met my modest needs so far.

The cheap router bit set I got from B&Q is O.K. to learn on, but a good bit (e.g. from Trend) would be a worthwhile investment for a quality finish. However these tend to cost up to £30 each depending on size and complexity, so brace yourself for paying as much or more for the bits as you do for the router.

HTH Dave R

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Joe Public's. If the enclosure is wrong, it will sound worse than the cheapest and nastiest commercial ones.

[John Rumm]

That is where my Freud spends most of its life...

Yes its actually very good in the table. The fine height adjuster is built in, and is a large and substantial control that is easy to use. The speed controller is good as well - it goes down low enough to make it safe using big cutters, and it has feedback control - so the speed stays constant even under load. (one implication of this is you can't use the sound of the motor note to judge the cutting load - hence you have to think more carefully about exactly what you are asking from it!)

[N.Jowsey]

Thanks for the useful info. Looks like I need to spend more than £100 to get good enough quality. At least I know that now and I'll look out for a better make.

As for my speakers, I do know what I'm doing :-)

3 way active left and right, 2 way active centre and active subwoofer. I consider this to be the best book on speaker design (in you don't mind graphs and a bit of maths)..

Neil

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its very hard to get it THAT wrong. Snce cheap and nasty comercial enclusres are basically little more than cardboard boxes, sometimes with a hole in..

Anything buigger and more solid will sound better. There is little mystery to it all. The trick is to suppress back radiation from te units. This is easy at high frequencies, harder at low. As a compromose between gian encluosres and prcaticality, it is conventional to flip the read radioatio and delay it via a tined pipe by half a wavelength at around teh lowest frequency the bass unit can muster. This then gives a minor resonant peak - that can be adusted by varying teh vent diomensions and teh internal wadding in the speaker - that gives about half an octave more bass resposne typically.

And that Is ALL there is to it. All teh super bullshit designs are ways to do this in varyng dgerees. However the best way is to get a big enclusre and a decent driver. Full stop.

[Pet]

Surely Audiphiles "fiddle" with German cars?

[NJF]

Argos have a 1/4" 8mm 1/2" JCB router at £39:99 at the moment, cheaper and no probs returning if it fails inside a year.

Niel.

[Christian McArdle]

The problem is that it effectively removes one of your hands, as it is wasted by keeping the machine on, a task that a latching switch could do quite adequetely, giving you the safety benefit of being able to control the machine better.

Christian.

[PoP]

That was an interesting design feature of the one I took back as well. I've never seen a sliding plunge lock on a router before!

No matter how hard I pressed the plunge lock down the router still decided it was only an advisory feature and that I really wanted the router to make up its own mind about how deep to cut.....

Pile of s**te.

PoP

[PoP]

I have an Excel SDS drill, and also an Excel circular saw. Both came with spare motor brushes - I think it's a feature of the range. Doesn't bother me - I think I read somewhere that the brushes are changed after about 50 hours of continuous use - and if I get anywhere near that amount of use from these tools then they've more than paid for themselves.

I'm quite pleased with both these products and would certainly consider other tools from the range if I had a need. The SDS drill is a bit on the heavy side though, as befits any SDS drill bought for under £100.

I used it last week to take tiles off a bathroom wall - that's a first for me and it was terrific fun! Place chisel bit against edge of tile, click SDS start button, complete tile falls off wall within 0.5 seconds. Repeat ad infinitum :)

PoP

[Andy Hall]

I agree. Safety switch design is not always helpful especially if it makes the tool more difficult to use because the user needs 3 hands to operate it properly.

It's the same mentality that makes saws with long arbors difficult to buy in case someone uses a stacked dado set on them.

Same story Legislation for its own sake Focus on the wrong thing.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Andy Dingley]

Mine is used in the table more than freehand. Freehand I use it about

50:50 between that and a 1/4" AEG.

It's particularly good in a table, because it has a big screw height adjuster as standard. I don't know why more routers don't do this as standard - it's one of the reasons I always recommend the Freud.

Switch is a little hard to reach, although easy enough to work blind. I have a NVR switch & socket mounted on the table.

-- Smert' spamionam

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think you must be right.

Sick, isn't it?

[John Rumm]

That was the main reason I decided to ditch the B&D "Woodworker" router I had before my T5 - except in its case the "lock" drifted toward a shallower cut all the time.

[PoP]

Which on the face of it is better than the router taking a deeper cut than intended as its easier to take another pass to remove more wood than to replace wood that shouldn't have been taken out!

Though still appalling!

PoP