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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.

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Comments

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818 Posts
Nice looking RT and big too ,should make a nice addition to you already well equipped shop.
I notice the absence of a mitre gauge track ,any reason for that ?

Kiefer
 

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3,876 Posts
Very Nice Project!!
 

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Kiefer: I actually have the mitre gauge track and still plan to put it in but have not yet. I guess this project isn't truly done after all!

Russ: Thanks for the link. Now that you mention it, I had thought about using a torsion box but by the time I realized my laminated MDF method wasn't going to work I had already created the carcass and a torsion box would have made my surface too high to work as the outfeed table even with the adjustable feet at their lowest setting. Luckily the slight sag over the 4' (incorrectly wrote 4" in the original post) length is very small (crossing fingers it does not get worse over time) and it is dead flat front to back.
 

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187 Posts
Rmac that link will be very useful when I build my router table. That's actually very close to the same way the new table for my old craftsman radial arm saw was adjusted flat.
 

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By the way slaternation very nice router table, I like glass front, it's going to give me some ideas for mine.
 

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8,785 Posts
great job…
 

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1,833 Posts
Well done, should serve you well for yrs to come.
 

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657 Posts
Great job on the router table. That large surface will definitely come in handy. Did you consider screwing some angle iron or channel underneath the top to help straighten it out?
 

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6,272 Posts
Stellar job on the r.t…...I think a good router table is a very important tool to have in any shop, reguardless if you are a novice, intermediate, or pro woodworker….Somewhere down the line you will need a good router table and fench, so like you've done, why not build a good one from the start…? We all need one….
 

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Top shelf project. Very well thought out and built!!!!!!!.........Jim
 

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Great job. Should really help with crosscuts too. Looks great.
 

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I like the notion of combining the router table with an outfeed table. The thing that strikes me as a bit odd about the combo is that you have two slots for the TS miters, and two adjacent slots for the router fence. I wonder if it would have been possible to combine them. That would mean the router fence would have to be miter slot rather than T track (or combo), alignment would be tricky, and possibly some fiddling with "lead in" would be needed to make the transition from the TS miter to the outfeed miter work well.
 

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Very nice looking fixture You have designed/built for Your self and although You feel it didn't turn out as advertized I am sure it will serve You well ! I too have made My self an RT/OUT FEED cabinet as well and I have made good use of it over the years. Although we have chosen different approaches to this set-up, they share the same features for the most part and You should be happy with the improvement in sawing and routing ops !

Thank for sharing and be safe…....ROB
 

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That is very well put together, congrats on a job well done
 

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For my table top I was fortunate to obtain some blank MDF office desk tops quite a while back.
Being 1" thick with Arborite factory laminated on both sides it is a very stable product that performs darn near like a cast iron surface, tough, flat and just slick enough to perform as you would expect.
An occasional waxing helps also.
For a good looking finish I add 3/4" hardwood edging glued and screwed.
If you are into recycling, never overlook an old office desk top for great HD work bench tops.
 
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