The table would not be something I'll use just once or twice a year. Frame building from scratch is something I'd like to pick up and I have a lot of photos I've hand printed over the year that can use a home. I've used the Veritas rounter table during my courses with Lee Valley and would love to own one. But at over $400 for the system, it's not going to happen soon (damn that large screen TV I got over the holidays!).

So here are the questions:
- Are there ways for me to accurately edge, bead, groove and generally work with small pieces without a router table? We're talking about 1x2 and 1x3 pieces.
- If a table is what I need, should I consider building my own or just purchase one of the portable tables from Vermont American or Wolfcraft for $150?
- Are the portable tables from Vermont American or Wolfcraft sufficient or is there a need to go the whole ten yards with a Freud or Veritas?

thanks,
gar.

The history of the router table is old in the sense of people mounting a router under a flat surface and using just about anything sqyare and straight for a fence. The router table is pretty new is you want to spend lots of hundreds on some of the new and VERY fancy table and fence mechanisms. You can easily spend over a grande on a new router table to which I say by a shaper.

A fine router table can be made by mounting a router to the underside of a nice flat 3/4" ply. you can make lags, it can have a small frame under it and sit on a saw horsy. it could be a hole in an old wood table or table saw extension table. It just has to be flat. A fence can be clamped to the table top with two clamps. The fence should have a cut out in it so it is around the cutter. Taller fences are good and an L shaped fence is best. you can make a fence from wood, aluminum or steel and any combo.

Take multiple and small passes. use push sticks and sacrifice blocks. Read lots on using router tables and shapers. And you can put yourself in the moulding shaping business with a router table for little or no cost.

Bill

My "router table" consists of a piece of 3/4" MDF on a couple of sawhorses. I haven't had trouble with bowing, but the experts would probably recommend doubling the thickness and, if you really want to get fancy, surfacing the top with laminate.

My fence consists of three lengths of 3/4" MDF glued together.

A propos of nothing, my Woodworking 101 instructor even had a portable router table, consisting of a four-sided (top, bottom, two sides) unfinished MDF box just large enough to accomodate a router and a length of MDF for the fence. He clamped the bottom of the box to the workbench or Workmate, clamped the fence to the top of the box and was ready to go.

e

gar.

gar.