I have been thinking about a new router table for some time now, as well as buying a 15a router for it. My old table is mediocre, and the Bosch 1617 really won't handle raised panels. (Yeh, I know, many small passes...)
I bought a 14.4a shaper, for less then even the cheapest 15a router would cost. It was 20 years old, but he used it twice right after buying it, and it has sat in his basement since. There was a little rust on the table, but that cleaned up easily enough.
Four problems with it.
1) The hole is too small for large cutters. Getting a larger hole seems prohibatively expensive, so I was thinking putting a second surface over the top. The bearings ought to be robust enough to handle a little more extension without excessive runout, no? 2) The table is too small. So I was thinking of solving 1&2 by using a large sheet of corian I was planning on using for the router table; gluing a piece off plywood to the corian, with a cut out for the old table, with a large opening to accomodate large cutters. Is this reasonable? I could run some supports from the base to the edge of the corian/plywood table, but it ought to be strong enought with them. 3) Sealing the front and sides to hook up a dust collector is easy enough, but the back would be a little trouble because of the motor and pulley. Also, the fence doesn't lend itself to easy DC connection. Has anyone found a clever way to do this? 4) I foolishly thought I could use my router bits in it, but now find I would have to buy a $90 adaptor. That $90 would pay for a couple cutters. Am I better buying the adaptor, or just going with shaper cutters. (I will be building a small router table to go in the left TS wing for small stuff)Or with all of these problems, maybe I should unload it and just do the new router table as I originally intended. At an auction last week, the same shaper went for 50% more than I paid for mine, despite being in worse condition.
Oh, all the decisions....