GLOAT: New router table, top, and insert for $50! Kudos to Lee Valley

[David Dube]

Been meaning to make a router table for some time... but kind of walked into the following deals...

Router Base: $10 Routinely our local Lowes has bathroom vanities on clearence. One weekend they had a 30 inch vanity marked down from $90 to $20... I haggled them, and they reduced the price to $10. Typical vanity... couple drawers on the side... used some 1/4" plywood to close in the drawers to prevent sawdust from getting in there.

Router Top: $3.75 Went to the local Habitat for Humanity Resource Center. They had a nice piece of laminate counter top that fit my new found table for $5.00... but wait... they had a 25% off all counter tops...

Insert $30 Ok... I could stop there... but time for me to splurge. Just ordered the Veritas Router insert for $30 from Lee Valley... just got confirmation it's gonna ship today. Also splurged for the template guides as well... and some gardening goodies for my wife... so maybe this cost me more than I really wanted it to. Anyway, I'm really psyched about the insert. Real simple design... installation looks ingeniously simple. Great idea Lee Valley!

Potential Upgrades: Mobile base... need to look at Harbor Freight to see if they have theirs on sale. Miter Slot... probably get something from woodcraft... Router Fence... probably the first thing I build after I get the insert.

In any event... many people have been talking about router tables lately and how to build something cheaply. Obviously one could just have used a sheet of plywood and that'd be it... but for $15 or so... I found a reasonable base and top... really didn't need the insert... but I'd done so well so far... might as well splurge.

:-)

Dave

[James D Kountz]

Thats a great insert until you want to use a bit larger than 1 1/2". Thats why I passed on it, I use quite a few bits that are larger than that.

Jim

[tmbg]

I can go you one better, I've built a table, insert, and fence entirely out of crap that I found laying around the shop. Glued together a couple of big scraps of MDF, laminated them with a scrap of white formica I found, including the edges, made inserts out of plexiglas, and glued up a bunch of maple and made a big sturdy fence with cherry faces.

splurged and spent $3.99 at highland for one of those little lever screw dealies to tighten the base on my PC router. It was held together with just a wing nut, and the wing nut was too wide to turn, it was obnoxious, so I put this level bolt thing in, and put a nut on the other side and epoxied it to the base of the router, now I have an easy way to loosen and tighten the base to change the depth.

Now I just gotta build a base for it :)

[Greg O]

I did a simular deal. Built a "box" out of MDF, top for a sink coutout I rescued from a job site. A aluminum plate for an insert given to me by a friend. I splurged on a extension cord, electrical boxes, switch and outlet, so I can turn the router on and off from the front of the box. No legs, I just clamp it to a couple of saw horses. Greg

[tmbg]

Right now I've got mine on saw horses, I just finished the fence, attached it and everything's working great! I need to build a DC box for the back of the fence, as well as a DC box for underneath where the router hangs, and I think I am going to build a nice cabinet base with a drawer for bits, and I'm pretty sure I have enough electrical crap floating around that I can get some front switch action going pretty soon :)

[Bob Davis]

Lots of good ideas in here. Thanks for posting.