Silestone router table top - a gloat

I recently had granite countertops put in my kitchen. The delivery was supposed to be the second week of December, and wife was really excited because she was wanting them installed before all the holiday parties. As it turned out they were a week late because the slab we picked out had some cracks that affected the quality. Owner did a great job in making sure we got the best quality installation, except wife was a bit unhappy.

In an act of good will, the owner of the company agreed to produce a router table top out of silestone for me. I just picked it up yesterday at the production shop and oooooooooohhhhhh is it sweet. Flat as a sheet of glass, sturdy since it's silestone, and nice and heavy. I have installed my old custom fence made from ipe and oak (design inspired by Pat Warner fence), and bought a new phenolic plate, everthing fits to a tee. Life is good here in the USA.

I highly recommend one!

Reply to
Todd the wood junkie
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Any chance you could treat us to some pictures of this gloat router table?

Reply to
Lee Michaels

I hope you are as happy with it as I am with my corian table. Of course, I had to pay $1 for mine at an auction, so it is not a big a gloat as free. (guy bought a huge pile of corian sheets for almost nothing. I asked him if I could buy some; he told me it was too much to carry anyhow, so I should take as much as I wanted for $5.)

Reply to
Toller

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Here are some pictures of my new router table top

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Reply to
Todd the wood junkie

Reply to
Locutus

it!! It looks good. I bet it is smooth too.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

On Feb 22, 12:10 pm, "Todd the wood junkie" wrote: [snipped a pretty cool post for the sake of brevity]

Funny thing is, that a friend of mine has all kinds of cook-top cut- outs and sink cut-outs made out of Hanstone, Silestone, Cambria, granite etc. How hard would it be to write a little routine for his CNC to make an inlet for a router plate?

Wondering what that could sell for.

What would anybody here pay for a nice slab of engineerded stone with a 12" x 12" phenolic plate...mmm...say 1/2" thick already included? The slab would be 1.25" thick and be about 17" x 24"? (Give or take a couple of inches, but never smaller)

Reply to
Robatoy

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That is sweet!!!!, I asked a few months ago the same question about using a Granite slab, but I think yours woulld be a lot better.

Reply to
bdeditch

How deep did they cut the recess for your plate? Also is this something aperson can do at home, as in making the cut out, or should a person leave it to the pros??

Reply to
bdeditch

On 22 Feb 2007 09:10:49 -0800, "Todd the wood junkie" scribed:

That is just freakin' sweet!

Phred

Reply to
Phred

It is quite simple. You just buy a template for the plate and route it out. Obviously it should be a deep as the plate. Yes, you can do it without a template, but that is rather complicated.

Reply to
Toller

What's so complicated about it? The last one I did, I did myself because the commercial template for the plate I was using (Rockler) was a sloppy fit.

Reply to
CW

In Silestone? What bit are you going to use? That Silestone is 93% quartz.

Reply to
Robatoy

The plate recess is a hair over 3/8 inch. My plate is 3/8 thick but the lip is only 1/4. I went deeper than necessary figuring it would be easier to shim than to skim!

With Silestone, I don't know of anyway to do this without the CNC and the special diamond bits that the shop used. I would not try this at home with this or granite. Maybe with Corian or similar.

Reply to
Todd the wood junkie

Diamonds and lots of water and horsepower and very accurate rotational- and feed-rate speeds.

Corian and similar products, however, no problem. But why not use a plate completely made from solid surface? (Make sure it's an acrylic composition, the polyester variety is too brittle to be safe.)

Reply to
Robatoy

I'm a little confused. You said the wife was unhappy, but you got the router table?

Reply to
MB

Did I mention how awesome a wife I have? Yes I do get the router table, but guess who gets to tell me what to make on that table...it's a beautiful circle!!

Reply to
Todd the wood junkie

I did the same with corian. very nice smooth and flat top but also quite noisy. have since got a shaper and gave the RT away but built a smaller one for occasional use when i did not want to change a setup. the small one is MDF and is a whole lot quieter and has much less vibration. I hate MDF but i have to admit that it has some redeaming qualities.

skeez

Reply to
skeez

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