Great big heavy router

[Bill Wright]

My good friend went blind, so he gave me some of his tools. One thing he gave me was a router. He said, "I've never been able to use it: it's too big and heavy." "What did you buy it for then?" "I didn't. I was given it. My uncle had it but he couldn't use it because it was so big and heavy so he gave it to me." "OK. Well, cheers." I can use it, but it's very awkward and cumbersome. Do you think I could convert it to one of those routers that are under the bench, upside down? If I could that would be very useful.

Bill

[harry]

A bench is available to convert some routers exactly to this purpose, DIY one here.

[Richard]

Several different approaches here:

[The Natural Philosopher]

Absolutely.

Its not even very expensive to buy a table for them.

[tabbypurr]

afaik every router can be screwed to a tabletop

NT

[Bill Wright]

Thanks for all responses, but I'm puzzled. How do you adjust the depth when the machine is under the bench?

Bill

[Andy Burns]

As well as the plunge mechanism, some routers have a threaded hole in the body, so a long screw can be fed through the bench into the tool, then you can adjust the height with e.g. an allen wrench from above

[John Rumm]

Yup, certainly... often the best place for a large router, although it ideally needs a decent variable speed range to get the most form it, since it will come into its own with larger cutters, and you can't run them as fast as the small ones.

[John Rumm]

Some may need you to add an auxiliary base plate to allow fixing. However you can make this or people like Trend to after market add on plates for pretty much any router.

[John Rumm]

Its depends a bit on the router and also how much you want to spend...

The original Elu style machines, can take a "fine height adjuster". This is an add on shaft that replaces the normal depth stop bar. It threads onto one of the turret depth stop presets, and allows the router to be adjusted with the knob on the height adjuster.

Others, like the Triton 1/2" and the Freud FT2000E have built in fine adjusters, that are good for table use.

The posher solutions are to go for a full router "lift". These allow the router to be wound up and down easily from above (or sometimes beside) the table:

[nothanks]

I've been tempted by these

but haven't yet taken the, errrr, plunge