Rather than spending a lot of time building a router table, I recommend making a Samurai Carpenter's router jig [1] which is far simpler to make, and more useful in most woodworking joinery tasks. I spent many evenings making a nice router table, and I've used it maybe a dozen times. The Samurai jig, on the other hand, I use all the time. Mostly cutting half lap joints in two-by material, but also for notching and general routing. It is much easier to use a router when you can the bit cutting. With a router table you have to rely on the fence for making accurate cuts. (A good fence is a mandatory accessory for a functional router table)
I have a router table and am finding with a small hobby style shop that setup time moving it around (cart with lockable wheels), attaching dust collection, etc. is cumbersome. I bought a battery powered trim router and end up using that. I think I'll give this a try for bigger jobs.
I don't have a planer and this looks like it could also be used to flatten boards that are 10 inch and smaller width by just setting the router depth to knock off a small amount. It would take some labor to pass over an entire board.
Though I've never done any fancy or ambitious woodworking, I made a similar jig for my cheap Sears router. I'm not a safety expert, but it seems an advantage of this jig is that your hands are always on the opposite side of it from the blade.
The only open blade tool in my shop is a table saw, and that thing makes me nervous enough.
You need to construct your fence and feather boards in a way that the bit is always covered and feed in from one end using push sticks. In most cases your hand should not be over the table at all. The main risk that can result in getting too close to the blade is a kickback pulling your hands in to the blade. Don't put your hands on that side. Understanding feed direction is critical to router safety. Don't feed work between the bit and the fence, have the bit half in the fence and spinning towards the work. I knew a guy who lost three fingers to a router because it wasn't in a table when it should have been.
Much of that is true of a table saw too. Stay back, use a pushstick, or make a jig. I cringe when I see Adam Savage using a saw with his fingers by the blade, there is no need. When I was an apprentice I would get yelled at for that.
The real risk with a router used properly is to your ears, your lungs, your eyes.
Thanks for those pointers. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have greatly slowed down my woodworking operation. The table saw mainly serves as a horizontal surface. But in addition to what you mention, I've always followed some extra rules: First, I don't design things that need dangerous saw cuts in the first place. Second, my fingers stay away from the blade because I don't cut anything that small. This produces more scrap. Third, I plan and visualize the entire cut before I turn on the saw, and if it's not going according to plan, I just shut it down.
Neither did I, so I just built a small box (maybe 1.5' x 2') with a couple small drawers for bits and all, adjustable fence, and a hinged top for easy adjustments. Fits underneath my bench. The Samurai's jig looks like a very useful addition to the shop, though, and it's now on my TODO list.
Author here. It's funny how I am writing blog posts on all kinds of stuff for years. Including typical hacker news content like programming or electronics, but it's a wood working article that ends up on hacker news :-)
To everyone having much better ideas on how to build or buy a router table: I'm sure you're right. But this is what works for and was affordable to me in my current situation. If my situation changes I might try one of your solutions.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed or leave a comment if you have any questions.
I appreciate the article for one specific reason. I cut a hole in my table and then routed around it but my handheld router slipped deeper. So, the groove was too low. I used some cardboard to sure it up, but I'm not happy with that solution. Your article has sparked my imagination for some better solutions.
I'm thinking I'll cut the hole all the way through and then 3D print some plastic corner pieces.
The part where you said “Time to void your warranty” was one of the best one-liners I’ve seen in a while. It definitely marks the point in a project where you tell yourself that you’re either committing to finishing this project or committing to wasting a lot of money.
This is really cool and gives me a lot of ideas for my own router lift. Over the last year I've been building a modular workbench using 2040 aluminum extrusion as the skeleton.
I have a "sidecar" for my contractor table saw (which otherwise stows on a slide out shelf for storage). One of the 2'x4' workbench pods then acts as an out-feed, and I can use the others as a combination of in-feed, left and right wings, or more out-feed.
One of the coming-soon projects is to make a router side-car, and the easy answer is to drop $500 on one of the fancy router lift / fence combos. Having a hard time pulling the trigger on that though...
Maybe even put some steppers in it and get some CNC component to get some "DRO" and "tool change position". That might be real nice.
Some routers have a height fine adjustment screw accessible through the base plate, some even come with a wrench for turning it, so if its upside down, you can just adjust it from the top like what was built on that page. A problem with both approaches though is that the plunge mechanism has some play in it, so it's not ideal for this job.
My Bosch definitely has play, but it also has a lock. So I always adjust "up" (bringing the tool up into the workpiece), and then lock it in place. The lock is a collar, and once you lock it in place it's not going anywhere. Kind of like guitar tuning, "always tune up to the note".
1) The base plate needs to be rigid, or it'll sag under the weight of a router. If you're using this for rough work, no biggie, but if I'm setting up a router table, I want precision out of it. You have two options: spring for an aluminum plate, or use thick plywood, but cut a circle down where the router mounts. You have to cut the circle down because you won't be able to lift the router high enough for some cuts. I have the 3 1/4 HP Makita, and neither the 1/4" phenolic plate it came with nor 1/4" acrylic will hold it without sagging.
2) M6x1 threaded rod is way too small diameter for this application. If you want to get good precision out of this, use a rod with a larger diameter from the fine pitch series. In theory, you can get 1mm pitch in 8mm through 28mm diameter rod, though I'm not sure what's common. I'd want something around 15mm. In old money, you want 16TPI, which is 3/4" UNF threading.
3) If you want to build one for the exercise of doing so, go for it. If you think you can do better than commercial for your application, build one. If you just want to get on with building furniture, buy one. Nancy Hiller put it best[0].
4) If you're hard up and you need a router table RIGHT NOW, screw a plunge router to a piece of MDF, plunge a bit through that'll cut a hole (N.B. most straight bits won't, but an upcut spiral will. Once you've got the center hole cut, you can plunge through damn near anything; I've used a chamfer bit for example), screw a piece of straight scrap on at one end, and clamp it at the other as a pivot fence. Adjust the router using the plunge mechanism, and the fence by gentle taps. Use a square piece of MDF to back up any end grain cuts. You can get pretty far without spending any money and a very small investment of time. You can also build an edge guide on the same principles.
Just came here to say that Matthias Wandel's Router Lift/Table at woodgears.ca is nearly the GOAT just to see that he's already found this thread...
Router tables and a decent assortment of tooling is unfathomably helpful for things like custom car audio fabrication/custom fab in general. I always want to cry when I see people taking hours fabbing with lesser tools for what a router table could do in minutes.
For anyone else, his Youtube channel is a must watch if you're into woodworking. His approach is wildly different than pretty much anyone else, which is very refreshing:
Just in case anybody does need a router table, you can buy a Lumberjack RT1500 router table for £200 in the UK. Lumberjack is just a rebadger so I'd expect it to be available elsewhere at similar prices.
It has 1/2" and 1/4" collets. It's steel topped. Really prominent height, power and speed control on the front. Good Enough™ fence and extraction.
It's one of those rare tools that is both cheap for what it is, and way better than expected. By no means perfect, but it's knocking on the door of a £1k DIY system.
I have some things to add that might be interesting to the aspiring woodworker.
I used to be a professional carpenter and joiner. I have spent long hours with a router. All these years later it it one of those tools I hate to touch. I know lots of publications like to market the router as the swiss army knife of the workshop, but they are noisy agressive machines that turn wood into horrible fine dust. They are expensive and so is the tooling. The tooling does not last long. If you are woodworking for fun then consider another way. Pick up an old moulding or plough plane second hand and enjoy what you are doing as a hobby.
I built my professional router table with an 6mm polycarbonate insert. Make a second one with a smaller hole, then you don't need the 3d printed bits. I never put a lift on it, I tipped it on its side to adjust it. Changing tooling is far more common than changing height, and that is a pita in a table whatever, unless it turns over. The whole setup cost maybe £50 if you bought everything new. My fence was homemade too, it was heavy and tall and made out of MDF.
Seriously though, buy some saws, chisels and planes and have fun. They are quiet, safe and produce chips not dust and can do everything a router can in a slower but more enjoyable way.
Or, go totally overkill and use what is essentially the Z axis from a CNC router, upside down, with the ballscrew replaced with a tight acme screw. And then use a cheap 1.5KW chinese spindle with an ER20 collet system. All the parts are designed to go together, and the VFD gives you speed control. It is quieter, more powerful, and the whole apparatus is much nicer to use. Once you've used spindles, you'll really only use routers for handheld tasks.
Self reply - I have contemplated swapping the cheap spindle for one that has an ISO20 tool change compatible spindle so you could swap bits from the top (and share tools with my CNC router). It seems very nice, but at this point is too much of a luxury.
I have used these a few times and do not love it. Once you have used a gantry type CNC, the router is too limiting. One problem is needing to recalibrate the reference surfaces with their tape, but the big one is clamping and fixturing. With the shaper, you need to have it touch the work, or at least rest on a reference plane. With a gantry machine you can hold small pieces and cut all the way around them. Basically, the shaper is only good for internal features, while a cnc router is good for internal and external features and can also do 3D contour work.
I played around with routers and CNCs for a few years in my garage at my old house. A key finding, obvious to anyone with experience, is that routers generate a lot of very fine dust, compared to most saws or drills. And this dust will stay there forever without adequate collection. Even now years later and after a house move I'll find a box or something from that garage that just makes my eyes itch and water the moment I touch it.
It is also worth noting that there are a good many toxic and unhealthy woods out there, and that breathing router dust is an excellent way to become very, very ill. Wear a mask--a proper respirator-style mask!
I cheaped out on putting together a router table a few years ago, and it always gave me problems. The plate was thin, and it would bend under the gravity of the router. The height adjustments were fiddly and not repeatable. The dust collection barely functioned.
I finally got sick of it and bought what I should have bought to begin with: this lift[0] and this enclosure[1]. It's expensive, but it works beautifully. Buy once, cry once.
When I bought my router table, I remember reading a lot of articles about lifts not being worth it due to lack of repeatability / slop in most of the DIY and cheap mechanisms unless you bought the $500> lifts. I'd be curious if this had a similar issue. I went with the Bosch table without a lift for $169 US, and it's nice that I can put it under my bench when I'm not using it. I use it with the fixed base on my DW612, which means I can move just the powerhead to the plunge base when I don't need the router table, so I've only had to buy one router. Works pretty well, and the Bosch comes with a whole bunch of options for jointing and workholding as well.
I like woodworking because to me it's the opposite of coding.
Software is pretty complex and hard to explain to people. Concepts are abstract, changes are incremental and it's never really "done". Even if part of it is beautiful, in some short time it'll be outdated and replaced by something else.
Woodworking, on the contrary, is something concrete I can touch and hold on my hand. It has practical uses, people can appreciate it and judge its form and function. If done even moderately right it'll last many years or decades.
It's really rewarding to be able to point at something you've done yourself, mistakes and all, and see it in daily use. The feeling lasts a whole lot longer than "I've refactored this class into something better".
In coding, making mistakes is expected and correctable. The challenge is often akin to solving a puzzle. You have a general idea of the shape of the solution, but it usually isn't laid out as a blueprint. The work is almost entirely mental. The challenge is intellectual.
In (fine) woodworking, making a mistake is far more punishing. You have a blueprint, not a puzzle. The work is as much physical as it is mental. The challenge is in setting up and executing a series of cuts, shapings, sandings, and finishings with perfect precision. There are few correctable mistakes: material can be removed but never added, joinery must mate perfectly else it's useless, blemishes in the finish are extremely difficult to remedy, etc.
I think a lot of coders tend to be perfectionists, wanting to be certain that their end product generates correct results and irritated to the point of obsession when it doesn't. I think fine woodworking feeds into that same perfectionist drive, and in an even more challenging way.
I don't think it just coders, I think it appeals to a lot of people who do a non-physical process for their job. It's nice to be able to build something physically with my hands, and not just edit a giant software codebase that makes some pixels change colors and conveys information, but otherwise has no physical world consequences.
I wondered that too until I started woodworking. A fairly substantial part of it is pretty scientific - you have to propagate measurements and angles between cuts and joints and think ahead about how things fit together. It's related, in a very abstract sense, to the sort of problem solving involved in programming.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV9Cb_-Axos