A friend gave me a woodworking magazine that had a fantastic design for a router table that could make micro adjustment to the bit height by turning a crank screw from the top of the table with out messing with the router. I can't find the magazine(wife cleaned out my reading stack) and was wondering if anyone knew what magazine this design was featured in so I buy a replacement copy of the magazine. Thanks in advance Bruce
I don't know about the magazine, but you can buy those lifts lots of places. I got mine at
Accurate to or graduated in? There is a difference.
I suppose it's accurate to 1/1000" The threads on their lifts are 32 pitch. If it was graduated to 1/1000", it would take you all day to adjust a bit height 1/2". Not the way I like to enjoy my woodworking.
Supposing doesn't make it in this case. It doesn't really matter as very few woodworkers would ever know or care but making claims like that means something. The pitch of the threads has no bearing on accuracy. Milling machines are graduated in .001 and they move along at a pretty good pace. I looked up the lift. It is graduated to .001. Due to the mechanism involved though, the chances of positioning router to that precision are slim.
This (at the pix link) can adjust continuously up/down & east/west in a very controlled fashion.
Have you actually been able to adjust the Incra Fence 1/1000" at a time using it's handwheel?
Woodsmith had something like that as a reader's suggestion. All it was was a pipe clamp with one end bolted to the underside of the top- it did look sort of handy, though. That one had the crank under the table- not above it, but you can buy inserts that have a removable handle that you can use to adjust the bit height from the top of the table. Is it possible that you were looking at suggested hardware in that article? I'd think that would be too much effort to make to really be worthwhile.
My friend made the table and it turned out to be a very design..That is why I borrowed the design and subsequently lost the bloody thing. I will try to look it up on woodsmith Thanks Bruce
Yes. This is really handy when I'm zeroing out the fence to the router bit (bits aren't perfect you know); I use a long straightedge cantilevered off the bit itself and sneak up to "no wiggle" with the dial. It's also handy for loosening up dovetail or box joints.
Of course, I only do this when I need to make a cut that accurately, which happens occasionally when I'm making a jig for some other project.
Also, you can consider a "half turn" to be 1/64 which comes in handy sometimes.
For those that may not know, Pat Warner designed this router fence several years back and it was a featured article in FWW. It was a very well written and inspired me to try and build the fence. I initially built a beta version to practice cutting the pieces that make this fence as accurate as it is. The guides were close but not quite there. After a couple of emails to Pat for some advice, the next iteration came out great.
I certainly can't say that mine would meet Pat's specifications and there is more work to building this fence than meets the eye. So if you decide to build one, be prepared for several challenges. If you need accuracy, repeatability and want a real workhorse in your shop, than anyone interested in purchasing one of these will find it to be money well spent.
Being only a hobbyist, this fence hasn't seen any real production use but after doing two complete kitchen makeovers for family, and a number of other projects, that fence is still rock solid and accurate and definitely has made routing an enjoyable part of my projects. The router used to be a tool that was fired-up only when something needed an edge treatment - and I really didn't look forward to using it all that much. After reading some more articles at his site
I know this sounds like I'm shilling for Pat (and I'm probably embarrassing him) but there's no association other than a very satisfied customer. If you want to learn more about routing - give his site a good close look. Pat is also very good at answering emails as well as offering advice here in the group. He's been an excellent mentor and one of the few pro's to continue to offer sage advice.
Bob S.
He asked about a specific measurement and you described "a little bit". Not the same thing.
American Woodworker had plans to build a router table and a router lift. The plans were in two magazines. The table was in the March
2000 issue and the router lift plans in the March 2004 issue.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.