A virtually free router plate

If at no level you couldn’t afford to spend $60 on a router plate, don’t watch this video, or learn any additional.

Nonetheless there? Cool.

Once I began woodworking I little or no disposable earnings. If I may get monetary savings by making one thing, I did. I paid round $200 for my first (and nonetheless major) router and that took me months to avoid wasting up for. If I added $60 for a router plate on prime of that, the dream of a router desk inched (centimetered?) additional away.

The router desk I used to be constructing was primarily based on plans from (I feel) episode 303 of The Woodsmith Store. It’s an ideal design, and it’s so versatile the bottom is now in use as a storage cupboard in my store.

The plans referred to as for the highest to be two sheets of three/4-in. MDF laminated collectively. As an alternative, I made a decision to make use of on sheet of three/4-in. MDF and on 1/2-in. MDF. The 1/2-in. items can be a patch work of items, permitting me to go away the middle unglued to behave as a detachable router plate.

The truth is, if I used to be actually good I’d have added the t-track for the fence into the quilt-work matrix.

You possibly can simply do with no router plate and simply screw the router base to the underside of the your prime—however the having a router plate means that you can take away the entire works to dial in bit peak, or change bits. Typically occasions I used the router mounted to the plate as an outsized router base when routing handheld.

Is that this answer for everybody? Completely not, however on the time it match my wants completely, and has been a stable performer for the final ten years. Sadly, I offered my tablesaw and advised the brand new proprietor that I would go away the router desk within the aspect wing. I used to be legitimately unhappy to see it go. I’ll make a brand new tabletop to carry a router elevate I purchased at a steal. However this router plate and prime obtained me by means of my first decade of woodworking, and it simply serves as proof that you just don’t want an costly router desk to do good work.