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.

Freshly-built router desk in my first store.

After I began woodworking I little or no disposable revenue. If I might get monetary savings by making one thing, I did. I paid round $200 for my first (and nonetheless predominant) router and that took me months to save lots of up for. If I added $60 for a router plate on high of that, the dream of a router desk inched (centimetered?) additional away.

The router desk I used to be constructing was based mostly on plans from (I believe) episode 303 of The Woodsmith Store. It’s a terrific 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 one sheet of three/4-in. MDF and one 1/2-in. MDF. The 1/2-in. items can be a patch work of items, permitting me to depart the middle unglued to behave as a detachable router plate.

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

I’ve exaggerated the strains to make it simpler to inform the place the seams are.

You possibly can simply do and not using a router plate and simply screw the router base to the underside of the your high—however having a router plate permits you to take away the entire works to dial in bit peak, or change bits. Usually 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 bought my tablesaw and informed the brand new proprietor that I would go away the router desk within the facet 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 high bought me by way 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.