ugrading my router fence/

[micks]

hi all find my charnwood router fence could do with some improvements, so looking for suggestions.

fence is fixed to a aluminium L shaped angle with single screw.
i find in practise outfeed fence tends to rise up and down in use ,and both sides do not stay parellel.

the fence faces are just laminate flooring , the only materials i have to hand are mdf,and some softwood offcuts, so would a once piece fence be better etc .

please see attatched pics (if this ) uploads from photobucket ok//

thank you

 

[colinc]

Hi,

Sounds like a length of softwood and two clamps might be better and safer than what you describe there. I have one of the older Charnwood table which I think is a lot better than their current offerings and served me well for years but you might want to think about building a more substantial table soon too - I found the whole thing too light and too small to feel really safe. Take hold of the bottom of the router and give it a shake - you'll see how flexible the whole arrangement is - not a good platform to get a good or accurate cut on.

here's one good fence idea but based upon an aluminium box section (the bit on the end of the incra, I wasn't suggesting you need the incra):

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3795&start=0 I have something similar evolving - just too busy using it to finish it.

However if you want to make a wooden one then there was a good micro adjustable design in GWW a while back which you could adapt - designed by a member here (was it Ian Dalziel?). I can't recall which issue but there's a copy in a drawer in my workshop because I cut up the parts for one before I changed direction - I'll look it up tonight if no-one beats me to it.

At the end of the day all you really need is an L-shaped construction of mdf with some reinforcing gussets - make sure it's straight and at 90 degrees to the table. Make an opening where the cutter goes and build a box around the back for dust extraction. Faced (both sides) with some laminate if you have it. Clamp it to the table and you're away.

Things like sliding fences can be added later if you feel the need. Finger boards can be cut from mdf and clamped on. Start simple and use it, there's no need to get complicated to start with.

There are a number of books around with some good ideas from simple to complicated. It's well worth a search on here of course!

If you haven't already found some good reading try "Woodworking with the Router" by Bill Hylton and Fred Matlack ( I do recommend this one a lot to people). I found/find it incredibly useful and built both the horizontal and vertical router tables described in it. Their advice on such things as making a router plate and their fence designs seems good to me.

regards

Colin

 

[George_N]

I built the router table in the Hylton & Matlack book and it works very well for me. For the fence I went with the design on the Wealden website by Ron Fox. I built it out of 18 mm MDF and unfortunately I didn't laminate the two moveable fence faces and they warped a bit. I made replacement faces out of 18 mm birch ply, finished with a couple of coats of polyurethane and, so far it is working well.

 

[woodbloke]

Micks - here's a pic of the fence I made for my table, it's just some 12mm ply biscuited in an 'L' section and then planed dead square. There's a small hood at the back into which I can plug the extractor and its faced with some 3mm acrylic sheet - clamps to the top of the table with a couple of 'G' cramps, in my view you don't need anything more exotic than this - Rob

 

[aldel]

Hi Micks,

Looking at your first photo it seems to me that you have the anti -kickback combe around the wrong way. Shouldn't the teeth be pointing the other way?

Aldel

 

[newt]

mick, kick back comb definitely wrong way round, fingers should point to the outfeed side.

 

[JFC]

I beefed up my record fence with mdf to make it an all in one fence and have a piece of oak on that as i found the mdf also flexed a very tiny amount .
Ron Fox , my last girlfriend used to call him ronny the router :lol:

 

[colinc]

I was thinking about this topic on the way home and realised guiltily that no one so far has mentioned guarding. I do think that it is important to get some form of guard in place to protect the fingers. It's tempting to work without and generally the router is a benign beast but it can generate the old red mist more effectively than wood shavings when things start kicking around, and that can happen to the best of us - ask around here.

Woodblokes's fence is much as I was trying to describe. It would be easy to make a guard from a (heat bent) acrylic angle with a couple of slots to give some up and down movement over the cutter and would help keep your fingers out of harms way if things go awry, and they will do.

Aldel's right too about the fingerboard, it should be resisting kickback from left to right. In the photo it's just hampering a smooth feed and so if you didn't just pose this for the photo I guess is set too loose to hold the work against the fence effectively. Turn it around and move it towards the work so that it provides some positive pressure on the workpiece.

Just some thoughts but please do think about guards.

Colin

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Excellent Colin by doing a risk assessment

 

[colinc]

Not so logical - was just thinking that swapping fingers for stumps could ruin your sex life! (but let's leave that thought without further discussion).

 

[micks]

thanks all for advice, featherboard was incorrectly fitted so not helping matters.

i have considered making a diy router table larger than the charnwood,for one thing the mitre guage slot is about 15mm and the supplied guage is a bit naff , it seems standard m/gauges slots are 3/4"

however when ive looked in my local b&Q/wickes for some laminated board etc to make a table ,never found anything suitable just plain mdf.

woodblocks table has given me some idea of what to do re fence/table.

in the past tried a piece of kitchen worktop to make table but found routing an the appeture for router, and dado slot was not a great sucsess ,but that was my first attempt

thank you

 

[George_N]

I made my table top out of two thicknesses of 18 mm birch ply (you could use MDF) and laminated it myself. You need to do both sides of the top (top and underside) to balance it and prevent it warping. The laminate is cut oversize and attached with contact adhesive (Evo Stick) and trimmed with the router when dry. The Hylton and Matlack book quoted earlier advises against cutting a mitre slot in the table top as it is a dust trap and can cause things to jam up at inopportune times. It is just as easy to reference jigs off the straight front edge of the table.

 

[colinc]

My top was similar to Georges but used 18mm mdf with laminate top and bottom. Plain mdf makes a perfectly good table for now though, probably worth sealing the surface to stop the blood ruining if you don't use a guard though! A couple of thicknesses of 18mm is good.

suggestions:
someone told me to make sure that if the boards are not perfectly flat you put the crowns together so the gap is around the perimeter, clamp it up and it ends up flat - worked for me and remains so.

If you use screws to hold it together whilst gluing take them out and fill the holes as one day you may want a slot or something just where the screw is.

Colin

 

[woodbloke]

After doing a bit of routing recently with small cutters, I suddenly realized that the hole in the fence is too big, as you apply a bit of steady pressure against it, the job tends to 'fall' into the gap as there's no support. This afternoon then, I decided to do sumat about it and made a couple of fully adjustable cheeks in some 6mm acrylic. They are held in place by 4mm c/s screws running in countersunk slots in the plastic. This means that the acrylic can be fully closed (if need be) or open for a bit of suction, depending on what's being machined - Rob

 

[Sam Salter]

Here's a fence I made when I got tired of the original router fence from Ryobi

MDF, a bit of "formica", some scrap plywood and a few "T" rail bits.
Clamps to the rip fence on my Ryobi 10" table saw.
Got the plan from "Wood" magazine (US)
Works well, great improvement!

sam