This is a very handy thing to have around the shop if you can find the room. I base that on the experience that the more finishing you can do to a piece of timber before it goes onto or into the boat the better and quicker your build witl be.

Please note that opinions and concepts on this page have passed the first taste as being worthy of your attention. I cannot however take responsiblity for the eventual outcome of purchasing, using or incorporting any of these.
A SIMPLE ROUTER TABLE

A CONVERSION OF A POWER TOOL FOR MORE ACCURATE WORK

By John Welsford Photos Dave Robertson

Now on one side of the Atlantic, this is a “shaper” and on the other , a “spindle moulder” But the function is the same. A shaped cutter is revolved at high speed and held in the right position for a piece of wood to be moved past it. Of course, a router does the same in reverse, the router is moved past the work , usually guided by a fence or guide.
But I find that holding a screaming 18000rpm 2hp thing with teeth eager to bite my hands a bit intimidating. On small jobs with jigs and guides they are wonderful, I have three of them and try and prefinish all of the boats interior components as I go. A machine can do a lovely job of rounding off the edges of stringers and frames much better and faster than a person standing on their head wielding a piece of sandpaper in a confined space.
Large long items such as stringers, big things like frames, odd shaped rebates and mouldings, tenons and joints , decorative fluting and edges are possible with hand held routers, but I find it much easier to solidly mount the router in a table , to put a guide in the form of a fence on the table and then run the wood past that.

The plate is then screwed to the table in a routed countersink cutout , note that the polycarbonate plate has to be absolutely flush with the table surface and the screws have to be below the surface of the plate.
My setup uses a very old “Skill” brand router, I’d dropped it and broken a handle, the switch died so was by passed and hard wired on ( I now turn it on and off with a “push button for off” switch on the cord which is much more conveniently located and safer than putting my hand in underneath ) This old piece of equipment has done close to 15 years of really hard work, lack of spare parts would normally have seen it retired years ago but I cannot see that it will ever need more than brushes and bearings every few years, two hours with plywood, nails and glue saved its life, and me the cost of a brand new one. It does a much better job set up like this and has saved me many hours of cursing with sandpaper!
In fact this setup has been so successful that I went and bought a “proper” spindle moulder, but that is for much bigger jobs and is another story ( watch this space, but don’t hold your breath, I want to play with it first )
JohnWelsford

LEFT. The fence is clamped on with two G clamps. The ruler
establishes the width of the 'cut'.

With a little planning you can make Le SawBox shown in previous articles.
If your router table is to be more permanent there are options such as a lid to cover up the spindle hole, or, if the arrangement is temporary you could have a full plate that dropped into Le SawBox when needed.
We are told that this is ideal when you are fitting out a bigger hull.
Another bright idea we have seen (and this works with portable saws as well) is to make the router table in such a way that you can drop it into a stout cardboard box.
Pays to check this out for safe use thought. Visions of you being chased around your boat by an out of control router or circular saw do not bear thinking about.