Please Help A Newbie Build His Norm Abrams Inspired "Ultimate Router Table"


TheWoodShouter

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Standing a heavy top on edge to cut grooves that need clean edges, not wobbly ones? The biscuit sized router bit would have some future uses. You could get a 1/4 thick cutter for,the,router bit but I strongly recommend the 1/2" shank bit.

Yeah sorry, I thought I linked to the bit with the 1/2" shank, which is what I'd get. I found a bag of 50 Wolfcraft #20 biscuits on sale today for $2.50, so I grabbed them. I also have been debating about getting a plate joiner, but I just don't think I can justify the cost for this project and the handful of other times in the future I'll probably use one. So I think I'll try the Whiteside 1/2" shank biscuit cutting bit instead.

 

something else you could consider, is tongue and grove. Grove the edging and tongue the MDF.

Thank you for the suggestion, but it might be a little too late for that since I've already cut the top to it's final dimensions, and I've already bought my edging and had it milled to 3/4" thick. And if I'm not mistaken, I think I would still need a router bit or set of bits to cut the tongues and grooves, so I think at this point the biscuits and cutting bit seem easiest to me.

 

Whichever joint you use, cut the edge banding a little wide and then use a flush trim bit after the glue up.  Otherwise you have to line everything up perfectly.

Definitely! That's exactly how I'm planning on doing it ;-)

 

Thanks for all the help guys, I really appreciate it!

 

-TheWoodShouter

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I know it's not the most ethical thing to do, but you could buy the biscuit cutter and finish your top and return it to the store and tell them you didn't like it. From all the returned tools I see at Menards, I would say it happens all the time. I personally would never do this unless the tool really didn't perform.

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You might also condier this:

http://m.harborfreight.com/4-plate-joiner-68987.html

I'm sure it would get you through this job and a few more before biting the dust.

Also, you certainly can do ,his all on a tablesaw, provided you can build a tall fence to support the piece as you cut the edge. Featherboards fore and aft of the blade, possibly some elevated to ensure the piece doesn't tip away from the fence as well.

Another TS method: First, remove at least 3/8 inch from all 4 edges. Add a sacrificial strip to the fence. Move the fence up to the edge of your dado stack. Now run the mdf through flat, so that you cut a rabbet all the way around, at least 1/4" deep and at least 3/8" in from the edge. Flip it over and repeat, which leaves a thick 'tongue' all the way around.

Now use the dado stack to hog out a wide groove in the center of your edge banding stock, forming a C-shaped channel that fits over the edge of the mdf. Use the dado narrower than the finished cut, run it through one way, then flip it end for end and cut again to make it centered.

I would say that you probably should have at least 3/8" length on the mdf tongue for the best gluing results, and about that much minimum thickness in the 'web' of your edge banding to avoid splitting.

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I know it's not the most ethical thing to do, but you could buy the biscuit cutter and finish your top and return it to the store and tell them you didn't like it. From all the returned tools I see at Menards, I would say it happens all the time. I personally would never do this unless the tool really didn't perform.

LOL, you know this did go through my mind. I heard from an employee at HD that it happens all the time, they call it the HD free tool rental program. It's something to think about, but I know if i bought it and used it it'd be real hard to return, and I'd just keep it anyway, lol!. To be honest, I also considered the roughly $50 Harbor Freight/Chicago Electric plate joiner (gasp!) for this project. I try to stay away from most of Harbor Freight's tools, but I do occasionally shop there for some little things. I've never tried one of their power tools, and at this point I'm really trying to buy only quality tools, but their plate joiner does seem to get fairly favorable reviews, and at around $50 it's about a quarter of the cost of the yellow one I'd like to have if I had to own one. I thought for this one project, how bad could this plate joiner be? But I can either spend $50 and get a so-so biscuit joiner, or I can spend $28 and get the Whiteside biscuit bit, which is a top quality bit from what I can tell. I think I'm going to go with the bit, it's cheaper and I think it will work just fine for the times I need to use biscuits.

 

Thanks for the idea though!

 

-TWS

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You might also condier this:

http://m.harborfreight.com/4-plate-joiner-68987.html

I'm sure it would get you through this job and a few more before biting the dust.

Also, you certainly can do ,his all on a tablesaw, provided you can build a tall fence to support the piece as you cut the edge. Featherboards fore and aft of the blade, possibly some elevated to ensure the piece doesn't tip away from the fence as well.

Another TS method: First, remove at least 3/8 inch from all 4 edges. Add a sacrificial strip to the fence. Move the fence up to the edge of your dado stack. Now run the mdf through flat, so that you cut a rabbet all the way around, at least 1/4" deep and at least 3/8" in from the edge. Flip it over and repeat, which leaves a thick 'tongue' all the way around.

Now use the dado stack to hog out a wide groove in the center of your edge banding stock, forming a C-shaped channel that fits over the edge of the mdf. Use the dado narrower than the finished cut, run it through one way, then flip it end for end and cut again to make it centered.

I would say that you probably should have at least 3/8" length on the mdf tongue for the best gluing results, and about that much minimum thickness in the 'web' of your edge banding to avoid splitting.

LOL, see my reply above about the HF plate joiner! I just didn't see that you also had the same idea here before I posted that reply ;-)

 

As for the edging, I had thought of building a tall fence or sled that would let me run the table top through the saw, so that's a great idea, but I think for the $30 I might as well get the biscuit bit. I think I'll have some use for it in the future, and it seems like it will work just the way I need it and safely too. A small setback in time, but I'm not in any hurry with this build, and there's plenty of other parts to work on in the mean time. 

 

Thanks again for your help and suggestions!

 

-TheWoodShouter

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Hey guys! I decided to post something of an update for anyone who may be interested. First, I ordered the Whiteside biscuit cutting bit with the 1/2"shank; should be here later this week or early next. I so far like the Whiteside bits and have been having good luck with them, but it's a shame I can't seem to find them with Prime shipping at my favorite online bookstore. And, as I mentioned before I did on the second attempt manage to glue and cut to size what I hope will be my table top. I'm so far very happy I went with the three layers of MDF, it seems like it will be very resistant to sag. And I know if you've seen one chunk of MDF you've seen them all, but I'm impressed with the mass of this thing, and couldn't resist posting a pick. I also wanted you guys to know I'm making genuine progress here, though slowly because of the job and life and everything else. This top is near perfectly square from corner to corner, and measures exactly the 34-1/2" x 24-1/2" called for in the NYW plans and others. So with no further introductions, I offer to you for your viewing pleasure my router table top; behold!

imagejpg1_zpsf367b3c0.jpg

 

OK, I know it's not that exciting, but there you have it. Moving on, I started to work on templates to help with routing the recess for the Incra lift plate I've purchased for this project. To be honest, I think this is far and away the most daunting aspect of this project for me, but with a few bumps in the road it's going mostly well. I tried a total of three times to make the first one of two templates I need to rout my recess. The first try came out very good I must say, but in at least one corner I thought my work looked a little sloppy, and I knew it would bug me for years to come if I didn't fix it, so I decided to try again. The second attempt was much, much worse, lol! I think I didn't use enough double sided tape to really hold down my guide pieces (see bellow), and I had a lot of sloppy looking lines in the second attempt, so it was tossed aside too. Third time was a charm, and I think I've done a good enough job where I can live with the results. The third time I had all the right voodoo, and it seemed to come out good enough for me; not 100% perfectly professional, but nice and snug around the plate.

 

To make my template I basically followed the instructions you can find in the manual for the Kreg router plates, which you can access freely on their website. In short:

 

  1. I first wrapped the edge of my router plate in blue painter's tape to give it the tiniest bit of extra clearance, and then I placed it on the template piece centered where it needs to be.
  2. I used four pieces of scrap MDF with perfectly straight edges to "surround" the plate and serve as a guide for the routing and drilling to come. I held them down with double sided carpet tape, and man that stuff can stick!
  3. With the guide pieces in place, I first used a 1-1/2" forstner bit to drill the corners at a 3/4" radius, using the two guide pieces at the corner as a guide for the drill bit.
  4. With the corners removed, I used my router and flush trim bit to clear out the rest of the material along the sides of the template.

 

Bellow is a pic of my third attempt at a template, and I think it's pretty good:

imagejpg2_zps3f9504c5.jpg

 

Let me also mention that these are "test" templates, so it's cut a little short in each direction. When I make the "real" one, I will probably make it larger so it's easier to firmly attach in place to the table top when routing the recess for the real top. As someone with little experience with a router, these "test templates" are time and money well spent in my opinion, but I didn't want to use too much material on these. Anyway, I was fairly happy with the template, and the real test is in how it works, so I gave it a shot on another small piece of scrap MDF. I used my top bearing router bit to route the profile around the edge of the template at the required 3/8" deep, and then knocked the inner corners out with my forstner bit, and the rest of the material with the jig saw. Crude, and not how I'll do my real top, for that I'm going to make a second template a la Dan S to give that inner cut out a clean and custom look. For now, this was just a test to see if I could get what I believe to be the most important part correctly routed out; the outer most edge of the plate and at the correct depth. Again, for the most part I think I've succeeded. The edges and corners look very good, if my finished product looks as good I'll be thrilled. The only tiny thing is I did not get the recess quite deep enough, the plate sticks up above the surface by maybe a 64th of an inch if even. But hey, better not enough then too much, right? And I know if I did it again I could get the depth just right. So here's some pics of the template and end result of this trial with the lift upside down in the recess because it's easier to support that way (yes, I'm basically working on my sled because I don't yet have a workbench, lol!):

imagejpg3_zps73fc08fe.jpg

 

imagejpg4_zps2141f3ee.jpg

 

imagejpg5_zps4350382d.jpg

 

So that's pretty much as far as I've got, but it's genuine progress ;-) Really, this is all I'd have to do to build a very functional router table, but I'm going to spend some time creating a second template to route the inner edge much more cleanly. But if I'm not mistaken, technically this right here would work even if it's not pretty, right? It's that outer edge and depth that are the deal breakers, right?

 

I welcome any constructive thoughts or criticisms; let me know what you think! Thanks in advance!

 

-TWS

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Excellent work, don't worry about your rate of progress, this is a really large project. The only projects that are probably larger than a router table are a case of drawers.

One other thing the triple layered top provides is a lot of sound dampening, MDF seems to just soak up vibrations.

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Dan, it seems really robust and stable, I'm very happy I went with your suggestion of using three layers of MDF. And as for progress, I do expect that things will be sloooow going, but I really do want to try to do things the right way on this project, and I'm willing to spend extra time to get the results I'm looking for. I really appreciate you tagging along for those times that I do get into trouble; your help is very much appreciated!

 

I hope to be working on the second inner template, as well as ripping the maple edging and getting that dry fitted even before my biscuit bit arrives. The top is what I consider the hardest part of this project, but once I'm confident I can build the top I can get started on the carcass too. Wow, lots to do on this project, lol!

 

Thanks again for stopping by and for your kind words!

 

-TheWoodShouter

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Oh, I placed an order for a sheet of laminate in stylish blue, but it's not here yet either :-( I know most tops are white for visibility anyway, but I like the look of Dan Phalen's Ultimate Router Table from CrestonWood where he used a reddish or maroon laminate on the top and drawer fronts. I want to do the same thing in blue. I also know that some commercially available and well regarded router table tops are totally black, and indeed my router lift plate - where all of the real business occurs - is black. So for looks alone, I am hoping to wait for the blue laminate sheet to get here. If it takes too long, I can grab a sheet of white at my local big box store, and then I'd do the top in white to keep moving, but still do the drawer fronts in blue laminate.

 

Hopefully more updates to follow soon, thanks to everyone for tagging along!

 

-TWS

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Hey all! I just thought I'd post a quick progress update before heading to work. The biscuit cutting router bit I ordered arrived on Friday, but I'm still waiting for the laminate material to come in; that should be soon, however. Because there are so many personal firsts involved on this project, and because I want it to come out right, I decided to get a little sidetracked this weekend, and I started to assemble a rolling cart for my drill press. I wanted to do my cart in the same style as my router table, in an effort to try out some of these construction techniques on the cart first. For starters I took the original three layers of MDF I glued up for the router table top and cut that down a bit to use for the top of my drill press cart. With the biscuit cutting bit I was able to attach the 3/4" hard maple to the sides, and I used a flush trim bit to ensure I have the edging even with the top. All-in-all I think that went pretty good, but I did learn just how fast the glue starts to set, and I did have some problems getting all four pieces of edging aligned perfectly before the glue set up. Consequently, I have one or two corners where the edging looks a little sloppy, but I'm pretty sure the laminate sheet will hide most of that, and if not it's not so bad that I'm worried about it - every cart needs two back corners, right ;-) I plan on laminating the top of the cart just like the top of the router table so they will match and for practice with the laminate material. I also plan to glue the edging pieces on two at a time (with two clamped in place) to the router table to make sure I've got them lined up before the glue dries.

 

I also made one other glaring mistake I'm not going to bother worrying about, but I'm glad I did it first on the drill press cart and not on the router table. I attached a 3/4" maple face frame to the cart, and that went basically just fine, but I thought I could make the edging slightly oversized and use my router bit to flush it up. Well, that didn't work out so well, there wasn't enough of a surface for the router to sit on, and I ended up with a couple of nasty gauges in the side of my face frame. I should have just cut it to size and glued it on and been done with it, but I had to over complicate things..... You live you learn.....

 

So here's a pic of the cart so far because I think it relates to the router table project. I finished the case, face frame, and three drawer boxes. The case is was just pocket screwed together, and I cut a simple rabbet in the from and back pieces of the drawer fronts that articulates with the side pieces. The drawer boxes are 1/2" ply with a 1/4" ply bottom held by dado along the bottom. No fasteners, just glued along the sides and clamped. I plan to make 3/4" MDF false drawer fronts, and cover those in the laminate material if/when it ever gets here. The two long strips of ply sticking out at the bottom are just a spacer to get the bottom drawer off the bottom of the cart, and the extra space above the drawer boxes to to allow for spacing between the drawers. Here's a pic:

 

imagejpg1_zps26017439.jpg

 

And of the drawer box:

imagejpg2_zps7e54e74d.jpg

 

Oh, I do also have some new blades for my table saw coming this week, I was having some trouble, and wanted a nice new blade to start with for the router table. Feeling more confident than ever after doing the drill press cart, I plan to get back to the router table this week. Please stay tuned for more updates, and as always constructive criticism is defintely welcome.

 

Thanks for tagging along!

 

-TheWoodShouter

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Hello all! Yet another small setback on my router table project, the laminate sheet I ordered came in but it came in damaged, and had to be reordered. Looks like another week or so before I'll get the laminate material now, but I think it's worth it to get the color I want. But, I have some new blades for the table saw coming tomorrow, and with those I can at least do the hardwood edging around the top, and I can start the carcass. So I know things are a little slow going right now, but I'd appreciate it if some of you would continue to check back in periodically as I'm certain to have some questions about the carcass construction.

And I'm just about done with the drill press cart I've also been working on. I wanted to ask, because it relates to both projects, how do most of you finish this kind of shop furniture? I'm thinking just a few coats of a polyurethane or shellac or something like that on the exposed wooden surfaces. Do you typically out a finish on the inside of the carcass or on the drawer boxes? I'm terrible at finishing, I like building things much, much more, so I'm ideally looking for something that's easy to apply but durable. Any thoughts?

Thanks very much for your help!

-TheWoodShouter

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I just use something fast drying like General Finishes Polyacrylic or whatever water based option they have these days. My knock on it is that it can look slightly plasticky or lack the "warmth" compared to other options like oil-based / varnish stuff, but it's shop furniture so I don't really care.

I've used Minwax Polycrylic clear coat on a few previous projects with good success, which I'm guessing is the same the same kind of thing. Is the advantage to these products the fact that they are fast drying and easy water cleanup? Again, I've used the Minwax version before and would be happy to use it here if it's appropriate.

For shop furniture, I make a wipe on poly by cutting any normal oil based poly with 50% MS.

Dan, when you say "poly" are you talking about the polycrylic stuff or good old fashioned polyurethane? And what does cutting it with the mineral spirits do?

And, do you finish the inside of the carcass at all or the drawer boxes, or are they left untreated?

I had some new blades for the table saw arrive today, and in the next day or two or three I hope to get the router table top wrapped in hard maple, and I want to get started on the construction of the carcass. I'm sure I'll have some questions about the carcass build, so please stand by folks ;-)

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it!

-TWS

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Dan, when you say "poly" are you talking about the polycrylic stuff or good old fashioned polyurethane? And what does cutting it with the mineral spirits do?

And, do you finish the inside of the carcass at all or the drawer boxes, or are they left untreated?

Yea I mean plane old minwax style poly, cutting it with ms makes it thin enough that it can be wiped on with a rag or paper towel. For shop furniture, I finish inside and out, as my shop is a garage and thus can have issues with moisture.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello guys! I just wanted to apologize for not checking back in sooner, but I guess I should have mentioned earlier that I had been offered a new job, and after much consideration I decided to take it. It's a lot more money that my previous job, which wasn't very hard to beat, but the hours are crazy. I've had only two days off in the last three weeks, and I had to spend both of them doing things other than working in the shop. Here and there I have managed to finish my drill press cart, and I finished making my two templates to route the recess for the router lift plate in the top of th table, and I have a start on the laminate covering the top. I do hope things calm down for me at work once I get more into things there, and I do hope to start working on the cabinet carcass as soon as I can. I bought all the materials for the carcass like three or four weeks ago now, and it's all just sitting there in the garage right now. It's great to have a job where I can make a little money again, but it's not so great when you have to work so many hours to do it. Anyway, I'm just asking for your patients with this project, I'll still need lots of help I'm sure, but my pace will be even a little slower now because of the new job. I will post more updates and pics just as soon as I can.

Thanks for your understanding!

-TheWoodShouter

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