Saturday, May 30, 2009

To Da Bear

From Da Bear: “I noticed your router table. My Kids are thinking about giving me one for father's day. I am looking at a nice Bosch one. Do you have any recommendations?

What kind do you use? Are you happy with it?

What problems to look for?”

To Da Bear: Thanks for liking my router table. As you will see from the following pictures, it is actually a table saw connection on the right side. I feel badly about this, because I can’t find a record of the brand. I THINK it is an Incra add-on, since I have an add-on Incra fence, miter gauge, and rails to match. But I can’t find a brand name anywhere on the router table extension itself.





I love the Incra system fences and tables, so you couldn’t go wrong with those. The precision is astonishing. You might want to check http://www.incra.com/ for the newest products as I bought this stuff 10 years ago.

FYI… My table saw is a Delta 3 amp 220v. I had the basement wired with 4 220v outlets so that I could move it round. I have all my shop equipment and cabinets on HTC mobile bases. Not cheap but worth every penny.

The router table has a permanent mounted Hitachi M12V. I wired a rocker switch to the router table for convenience of turning it on and off easily.

A quick check of some good tool discussion sites said that Bench Dog 40-031 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RHP5 ProMax Cast Iron Router Table and ProMax Cast Iron Router Table http://rt1000.com/index.html seemed well regarded. Amazon also gives high ratings for a different Bench Dog http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RHP5. You might want to take a look at all those.

Everywhere I check Bosch seems middle rating. Nothing wrong, but not ever best. I like my Incra system and recommend it, but if I was to buy a new one, I would have to investigate Bench Dog also.

If I’ve learned one thing, it is not to buy cheap power tools or tables/fences. Sometimes they are very similar, but mostly the ratings are seriously different!

Hope this helps…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, I need the info.

I am about to be given a planer and a joiner, so my budget for the router table should be greater as a consequence.

da bear

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