Trash to Treasure - Router Table - 047

If you've ever been to Lowe's or Home Depot or any of these other big box stores or Carver Freight, anyone that sells power tools, you've probably seen some benchtop router tables. Essentially it's just a box to hold the router and a router plug and insert on an animated surface. There's really not that much difference between them all. They all serve the same function and they're always over $100. You don't necessarily have to buy one when you can find one. What I have here is a low profile entertainment stand that somebody was getting rid of. Actually somebody just left I should say. It's the same thing. It's got some glass doors to hold the router on the inside. It just happens to have a couple slots on the sides that you can put your router bits. It's not made for a router but I'm going to make it fit my router. One of the reasons why I haven't built a really nice router table is because I don't have a really nice router to put in it. Maybe when I get a decent router I will build one. But in the meantime I just like to use what I can. My best router right now is this skill 1 3 quarter horse power plastic piece of junk. It does alright but it's not worthy of a really nice router table or router table top. What I have been using for a while is this old dining table that I cut up. I didn't seal the edges so it started to twist and warp. I made this little insert plate out of some laminate flooring. I just screwed it to the base plate for the router. It does alright. I just screwed this little fence in place that will slide out of the way on this pivot point. Then you can take this out like so. But like I said this is turned into junk and it's not really keeping straight. It's just cumbersome to set up and clamp and get it all nice and neat. What I'm going to do is take this insert plate and I'm going to fit it into the top of this low profile entertainment center. It's black so I apologize if you guys can't see too well because of the lighting. What we have on the inside here is a nice empty void for the router. And some thinner areas on both sides that if I wanted to I could make some pull out shelves for my router bits. This is junk and I'm making it usable so I don't know if I'm going to go that far with router bits. I've got some cases that they're in and I may just slide my router bits in there without making any shelves or anything. I can always just reach in there. It doesn't matter if I have a shelf or a drawer or the original container. They're going to be stored fine and it will be the same amount of time to access them. But the reason I'm still going to use this as opposed to waiting for something else is this is laminated on both sides. I put a straight edge on it and it's pretty darn flat so this will work for me. I'm going to route out my template hole for my insert plate. Once I get that done I'm going to set it in place and from the bottom side I'm going to put some supports all the way around it. That way it will thicken up where the weight is going to be. Other than that, there's not much to this thing. It's already built. I've got to approach this a certain way because this is the only pattern bit or flush trim bit that I have with the bearing below the cutting material. I'm going to use this old one as an example. In order for me to get the depth that I need, which is like so, and still have this bearing to ride against something, I need to find out how thick I need to make my template to route around. With it in here I can measure from the tabletop surface up to the top of the bearing here and then once I have that measurement I can cut my pattern all the way around at that thickness, put it together around the insert plate, and then set my depth on my router so that this bearing will rest up against the pattern and I will have that much below the pattern to remove. I may have done a horrible job explaining that but let me get it put together and it will make a little bit more sense. To make the template I've got my old insert sitting on the table and I'm just using some dimensional pine to wrap it around. I'm going to use pocket hole screws to secure this one into here, this one into here, and this one into here, and this one into here like so. I've figured my thickness of this insert has to be one inch thick so what I'm going to do first before I drill the pocket hole screws I'm going to set these on their side and rip them down to one inch widths on the table saw. All the sides are cut and secured which holds the insert plate nice and snug. I want it snug that way I can sand a little bit here and there and adjust as I need. I'd rather it be snug than loose. The one inch thickness like I was saying was to allow the router bit something to ride against and have the cutting depth equal to the thickness of my plate. I've made quite a mess here. I first routed out a smaller hole on the inside because I wanted to leave as much of this material as I could for support. I routed out this little hole for the finger grab. It's bigger in the middle because of the mounting bracket or base plate or whatever it's called. It fits in here nice and snug which I like because I use this more in the table setup than I do in the handheld setup. It's about a sixteenth of an inch low which is great because I can put screws all the way around it and back the screws out which will level it up nice and neat. I'm happy with that. I've got to remove some of these little stand bumpers or whatever they are from the top and this thing will be done. Another thing I like about this is there's a lip all the way along the side so if I want a fence setup I can make some type of clamping mechanism. Something like what Steve Ramsey did on his. I'm excited. It's not going to have a router lift. This router doesn't deserve a lift made for it so this will serve the function quite nicely. I might be concerned with heat build up in here with these doors shut but there is a larger hole here, a hole here, this door doesn't seal all the way around and in the back side there was a hole for the wires for this little entertainment stand. Plenty of holes, plenty of air. It's just trash here so I'm making something out of nothing but structurally it's pretty darn strong, there's no wobble to it at all. Free router table. I'm going to get these screws in there nice and level. Once I get it completely set up by the way, I'm going to come to the other underside and support this a little bit and also just brush on some lacquer before I leave so it will dry overnight. Brush on some lacquer on this so it will seal it and stop moisture absorption. That's what killed the last homemade router table I did so I don't want it to kill this one. I don't have any money in it but it's going to be a decent one so I want to keep it decent. I've got the plate mounted in there with some screws all the way around to level the surface nice and good. I fed my cord through that little hole in the back right over there. Now I'm ready to test this and see how well it fits. One of the only benefits of using this crappy router with this setup is it nearly falls out. There's a little lever under there and when you release the lever the router almost nearly falls to the ground so that will be easy to help me remove it to change bits. To mount it, it shouldn't be that difficult. Slide it in place, lock it down and now it will be alright. I'm going to run the cord probably around the back over here somewhere and just put a switch out of the way where I won't bump it. Put a switch with a cord running from the switch to an outlet. Real easy to do but a free router table. Some of you may complain about this glass breaking because of vibration or because of a piece of wood being thrown at it. Possibility maybe but I don't think so. I think this will be alright. It's just trash and it's better than the router table I had. I'm going to go ahead and use it. Like I said I want to get that cord with the switch mounted and maybe just throw some little fence together. Just something where I can use it and play around with it for a couple minutes. Other than that, trash to treasure. Little entertainment center going to the dump. Nice flat router table. I'm happy. I'm very very happy. What I have is an OG bit installed for my fence. I've just got a piece of 2x dimensional pine ripped down so I've got a nice straight face here. I've used my drill press and forstner bit to drill a recess to house the bit. The bearing is flush with here. This fence is just clamped down on both sides. This is ready to test out real quick. I want to make a couple cuts and see how stable this is. I don't have a switch wired up to it yet but that will come. Like I said I've just got the cord fed out the back and into the wall outlet. I'm just going to start this by hand. I'm interested to see how much vibration is dampened with this. Obviously a little bit of dust on the top surface. Not an incredible amount. Something I was not even thinking about is dust collection. I don't use the router a tremendous amount so this isn't going to be a concern. It collected most of the dust in here so that's a lot better than on my floor. I can take a small brush and brush it over to one side. Good to go. You're not even on the floor. With these doors shut I don't have hardly any dust on me. Which is something I'm not used to when using a router. It toned down the volume of the router just a little bit. Nothing to brag about but it toned it down just a little bit. The crack in here all the way down and then the seam right here all the way across. The hole right here, hole right here, hole in the back. There's plenty enough air flow for it to breathe. I'm not going to leave this thing running for 20 minutes on end. What I normally do with a router is basically what I just did right there. That's about as much as I do before turning it off. Heat build up I don't think will be an issue. For the money I spent on this thing, nothing, I'm absolutely pleased. I've been saying that a lot lately. I'm very grateful I found some of these trash to treasure pieces. Hopefully you can do the same. You don't necessarily have to have the latest and greatest and fancy and expensive to get into woodworking. This is a router table, it's functional, it did the job just fine for nothing. Just be creative. Let your mind do the work, not your pocketbook. Keep that in mind and maybe you'll be able to turn trash into treasure as well. Thank you for watching.