Router Table #1: Mid Construction

I’m getting ready to head out again, hoping to be back Thursday this time, but I wanted to post some of the new router table I’ve been working on (no it’s not the white one) ;-). I’ve been chipping away at this one for a while now with no real rhyme or reason to it, just sort of doing what I feel like when I feel like it. I’m sure that the lack of planning will jump up and bite me at some point but so far so good.

Here’s where it stands right now.

It’s 3/4” birch ply. I was experimenting with the Minwax Sedona Red that I used in the Winter Contests, that explains the color. The face frame is oak I salvaged from a bathroom vanity that went bye-bye during a re-model job a while back. When I ripped the oak pieces to width I ended up with dowels in my strips that were part of the vanity construction. The pieces wouldn’t have been long enough if I had cut out the doweled sections so I decided to leave them in place and situate them symetrically in the router table so they look like they are doing something.

The finish is BLO, with a couple coats of Zinsser Dewaxed Shellac, and a couple coats of paste wax over that.

I started working on the bottom drawers this weekend. Not the cleanest glue ups in the world but hey, it’s shop furniture.

I still need to cut a hole for dust collection in the router bay and I haven’t quite decided what I’m doing for the top, the fence, and the router bay door. This has been one of those “design it as you go” projects. But I’m pretty convinced that it will include a Jessem Mast-R-Lift. I can tell you that it’s going to be a good size table though. The top will measure 25”x42”. I’m expecting the dust collection might be a challenge, I think got a little carried away with the size of the router bay, it’s 22”w x 24”d x 14”h. I’ll figure it out when I get there.

-- I've cut that board three times and it's still too short!