Mini router table

[Doug]

I’ve had a Makita battery trim router for a couple of years now & find it invaluable, it really is useful, easy to set up & generally a pleasure to use. Unfortunately at times it’s too easy to reach for & I have on occasion’s rather than set the spindle moulder up simply clamped the battery in the bench vice & used it inverted to round over trim :shock: not a best case scenario.

So after a recent thread on UKW I learned that Aim tools sell Katsu accessories which will fit my Makita router, they sell a plate for inverting it & also a spare base which means I can leave the base on the plate & simply slip the router out & put it in its original base in seconds, this got me thinking about a mini router table.

So for about the price of a genuine base I got both the plate & base, here they are with my router



The general quality was surprisingly good particularly for the money, the edges & base of the plate were a little raggy & could have been sorted with a File but a waft over on the miller was much quicker





This is the plate & base attached



Now I appreciate this isn’t going to chomp through timber & will be limited in its application but for those little jobs that it really isn’t worth setting up the moulder this is definitely going to come into its own.
I’ve a few ideas on the design of the table & hopefully in the next few weeks when time permits I’ll get round to making it.

 

[Doug71]

I shall be following this with interest.

And I thought I was the only one who clamped their router upside down in the vice for those quick little jobs

 

[Woodster]

I shall be following this with interest.

And I thought I was the only one who clamped their router upside down in the vice for those quick little jobs

:text-+1:

 

[Eric the Viking]

I've got a posh version - a bit of Ikea melamine-faced wardrobe chipboard, that fits on top of the legs of my cheapo workmate. not quite as quick to fit, mind, as there are 11 screws.

 

[Doug]

This has been on the back burner too long for quite a few reasons one of which is I’ve been laid up with knee problems so rather than do nothing I’ve been learning cad drawing.

The particular program I’ve been learning is the free version of V carve & I’ve surprised myself how quickly I managed to get the hang of it, so armed with this new knowledge I went over to a mates to try & put it into practice under his watchful eye.

I figured as it was my first go & I'd got a couple of projects that were ideal for a CNC I’d kill two birds with one stone & make a couple of router plate bases.



It was a really interesting exercise I learned so much & even ended up with two really good bases.



Hopefully it won’t take as long to get the tables finished :eusa-pray:

 

[Malc2098]

Nice.

 

[EssJay]

Looking good Doug,

steve

 

[Doug]

Hopefully it won’t take as long to get the tables finished :eusa-pray:

Well that was wishful thinking :lol:

The problem was once I had the plate in the table & the router attached I could use it quite safely clamped it to the bench, so as Sod’s Law dictates once you start using something it never gets finished



But as you can see the extraction was awful so the last couple of evenings I decided to get it sorted, the router sits nicely on its battery so I didn’t need a large box just a way of holding it steady so I came up with this.



This was glued to the top with dominoes & also the edges of the top had edge banding glued to them.



The table would need a little fence so I made one from a piece of angle, cleaned up it was sprayed grey & an MDF box glued to the back to house a dust hose.



After another lick of paint & this is the finished article









I’ve only used it to try it out but with two dust hoses attached I saw no noticeable spillage of chippings, the controls were easy to access & setting the depth was no problem as without the battery attached the whole thing was really light to handle, overall I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out.

 

[MattS]

Neat solution for a trim router, clever idea sitting it on the battery. Results in a really minimal table but still really functional.

 

[Malc2098]

Neat.

 

[Weekend worrier]

Nice job. I have the Katsu router and the Alu plate and will get round to turning it into a mini table at some point. Really like your solution here

 

[Lons]

Excellent, practical solution :eusa-clap: I'm not sure I'd have bothered prettying it up but it looks good as well.

I have an ancient Elu MOF 96e but also the original Elu table which is very small but useful for exactly the reasons you sorted yours.

 

[Doug]

Thanks for the comments, I’ve been using it this afternoon to round over the corners on some trim, so easy to use should have done it ages ago :lol:

I have an ancient Elu MOF 96e but also the original Elu table which is very small but useful for exactly the reasons you sorted yours.

I remember those Bob a mate had one, lovely piece of kit.

 

[MattS]

I have that little Elu router and small table built into a slightly larger laminate top. Ends up similar size to yours. Was a proprietary product from the time from a shop, I picked up second hand. The Elu router is very well made