Project Information
This is a router table I built which also serves as an outfeed table for my table saw. I applied a lot of the same techniques that I used for the wall hanging cabinet I made however this was much more complicated with drawers, an access door to the router bay and a large table top.
The hardest problem by far was getting a flat tabletop. It is approximately 4'x3' and I could not manage to get a perfectly flat surface after gluing two 3/4" MDF panels together. Initially there was about a 1/32" - 1/16" sag through the center to the tabletop which was far outside the tolerances I was shooting for. My brother and I finally hit upon the idea to weigh down the sides with weights while we attached the tabletop to the carcass using L brackets. This worked surprisingly well and the tabletop is now at most about 1/32" across the full 4" section. I really wanted a perfectly flat surface but to be honest I am not sure how to accomplish that with sheets of MDF which are available locally. I spent a lot of time digging through the piles at the stores near me and they were all warped to one degree or another.
The carcass is built out of 3/4" birch plywood and cherry hardwood for the face frame, drawer fronts, and tabletop trim. I use a Jessem Mast-r-lift II router lift and a woodpeckers super fence. I am very happy with these two accessories. Being able to micro-adjust the cutting depth from above the table is a luxury I have dreamed of for a long time. The fence is also very nice and much easier to accurately set than the crappy MDF fence on my old Ryobi bench top router table.
I bought the On/Off switch from Grizzly and wired it up to an outlet on the inside of the router bay so it is easy to disconnect when needed. The router itself is the Porter Cable 7518 which, as advertised, delivers great performance in a table.
The hardest problem by far was getting a flat tabletop. It is approximately 4'x3' and I could not manage to get a perfectly flat surface after gluing two 3/4" MDF panels together. Initially there was about a 1/32" - 1/16" sag through the center to the tabletop which was far outside the tolerances I was shooting for. My brother and I finally hit upon the idea to weigh down the sides with weights while we attached the tabletop to the carcass using L brackets. This worked surprisingly well and the tabletop is now at most about 1/32" across the full 4" section. I really wanted a perfectly flat surface but to be honest I am not sure how to accomplish that with sheets of MDF which are available locally. I spent a lot of time digging through the piles at the stores near me and they were all warped to one degree or another.
The carcass is built out of 3/4" birch plywood and cherry hardwood for the face frame, drawer fronts, and tabletop trim. I use a Jessem Mast-r-lift II router lift and a woodpeckers super fence. I am very happy with these two accessories. Being able to micro-adjust the cutting depth from above the table is a luxury I have dreamed of for a long time. The fence is also very nice and much easier to accurately set than the crappy MDF fence on my old Ryobi bench top router table.
I bought the On/Off switch from Grizzly and wired it up to an outlet on the inside of the router bay so it is easy to disconnect when needed. The router itself is the Porter Cable 7518 which, as advertised, delivers great performance in a table.