On the live press conference tonight: “It’s interesting how, before they ask their question, reporters stand up and give a little spiel that taints what the question is. It’s their view of what is going on. . . . And it’s not the same thing as objective reporting.”
On the live press conference tonight: “It’s interesting how, before they ask their question, reporters stand up and give a little spiel that taints what the question is. It’s their view of what is going on. . . . And it’s not the same thing as objective reporting.”
Weird. I just had a guy come to my front door and ask to buy my truck. He said he’d like to ship it to Mexico because it gets better gas mileage than a full-sized pickup. It’s a 1992 Chevy S-10 Tahoe with 145,000 miles on it. Still looks good and has a carpet kit and a shell.
This wouldn’t be blog-worthy except that it’s the fourth time it’s happened in the last year (once I got a message on my windshield in a parking lot). Funny, but the other two buyers were also from Mexico. I wonder if that model is especially popular down there or something. He left his number and told me to call when I was ready to sell.
Oh, the things Garageband can do. Brilliant.
It took exactly 3 weeks of work-probably 50 or so hours, but the router table is finished! Here’s the story.
I wanted to make a router table that was similar to Norm Abram’s on the New Yankee Workshop:
While I liked the design, I didn’t want to build it from plans, and I wanted to modify it a bit to fit my situation. My friend Giles was kind enough to burn a copy of this episode to DVD so I could reference Norm’s techniques during construction.
I didn’t take pictures of each step, unfortunately. I would generally grab the camera and take a shot when I remembered.
The first thing I did is build the carcass. The body of the table is built out of 3/4″ plywood- maple on the good side and birch on the back. I carefully cut the 4×8 sheet so that the sides of the finished project would have a matching grain pattern in the final piece. In fact, I spent a lot of time thinking about cuts so as to avoid unwanted grain patterns.
Here’s a picture of the carcass going together (click for a larger pic):
Next, I started on the drawer support assembly and glued up the carcass proper:
Time for this step: about 2 days.
Next, I attached the 1/4″ back with finish nails from my nailgun. I then cut some very thin pieces of walnut and glued them over the nail holes. This was a persnickety part of the project as the tolerances were very small and the strips of walnut were very thin. It’s a nice effect, even if it is on the part that’s against the wall:
After that was done I trimmed up the front of the cabinet in more walnut:
I did this for two reasons. I wanted to hide the edges of the maple plywood and I also wanted to get some more experience machining walnut. It’s a very nice wood- fairly dense and very forgiving, it finishes up nicely with oil. I’ll be building furniture out of walnut in the future and want to be able to make mistakes on my shop projects. Trimming in hardwood is more expensive than leaving the edges open (an option), but I discovered that once you disregard the fast/cheap/unattractive option in favor of the slow/more expensive/attractive option a few times, you have to continue down this road or the ugly shortcuts will really stand out. This has the effect of doubling or even tripling construction time, but the end result is always worth it.
The trim took a whole day to get right. The joints are all perfectly flush. I used nails in a few places and wish that I hadn’t as the holes are fairly big. Lesson learned.
Time for this step: 2 days.
Next I got 2 pieces of 3/4″ MDF for the top. The pieces were slightly oversized. I had the guy at Home Depot make the rough cuts since the 4×8 sheet of MDF weighs almost 100 lbs. It’s awfully hard for me to maneuver the sheet through the table saw alone so for safety’s sake Homer did it. Once the pieces were trimmed to size I glued them up with standard yellow wood glue (lots) and every single clamp in my shop (25). I could have used more:
Time for this step: 1 day
The next step was to use contact cement to apply the counter top laminate to the top of the table. I lucked out and got a 3×6 piece of laminate from Home Depot. A full 4×8 piece runs $49. This piece had been cut up for some other purpose and since the remainder wasn’t standard sized, the salesman sold it to me for $5! And I even like the color.
I spent the next several days building the bit drawers (5), full drawers (2), and the big-momma bottom drawer that’s on the full-extension drawer slides. After I finished I trimmed the edges of the big drawer with walnut:
While the top was drying I spent some time practicing making the cut for the router plate. As I posted before, it is absolutely critical to make this cut exact with no slop in the final hole. I worked out my technique using a scrap 1/2″ piece of MDF. It turns out that I had to build some rather funky jigs to get the hole right. There was about .005″ of slop in the final cut but I thought about it and figured out what I had done wrong. Time for the real thing!
Success! Perfectly sized hole and a *BIG* sigh of relief. I really didn’t want to re-build the top again!
I then cut the piece of 1/4″ clear plexiglas, drilled 1.5″ holes in the front for circulation, and epoxy-glued it into a piece of walnut. It acts as a clear dust/debris shield for the router and removes in less than a second.
Next came the fence system. I built the fence with scrap 3/4″ MDF and more white laminate/contact cement:
After I got the laminate on the fence pieces I VERY carefully cut some grooves in the top of the table for the miter slots and the aluminum T-Track for the fence system. This took me several hours of careful dado cutting and router work. Laminate chips if you’re not very slow and deliberate with these cuts and I didn’t want my beautiful top to get dinged. Here’s a picture of the top with the miter slot and the t-track installed:
I got really silly with the detail on the fence faces. I trimmed them in walnut and coated all four sides with white laminate. Then I cut slots for some more miter track and cut a 45 degree chamfer in the edges. I actually got to use the table for this cut and it went great! When the two fence faces were done I attached them to the aluminum “L” bracket I got a few months ago at the Houston Woodworking Show:
Back to Home Depot for some electrical boxes, a 20 amp switch, and various other electrical supplies. I spent the next day reading about how to wire up the electrical system correctly. It wasn’t hard but it took some messing around with electricity, which will always slow my already slow pace. When I finished I had a main power cable out of the wall into a switch that is mounted just under the table. The switch controls the power to an outlet that the router is plugged into. The switch also activates an outlet that is on the back left of the table. If I plug the shop-vac into this outlet (with the hose attached to the table just behind the bit) and hit the switch, the router and the shop vac both come on at the same time. Nifty!
Almost there. I spent a few hours sanding the station to 220grit and applying a coat of linseed oil (Tried and True again).
The final step was to install some phillps-screwhead drawer pulls that Erin found on sale at Restoration Hardware.
The finished table is designed to match the hanging tool cabinet and I’m very proud of the results. I’m also glad to note that I’ve gotten a commission of sorts to build an entry bench for a friend-of-a-friend’s house. The table and cabinet served as my “application”.
Here are some pictures of the final product (click for bigger versions). Let me know what you think!
Closeup of drawer pulls and switch
Internal outlet
Drawer trim detail
Bit Drawer
Finished top with featherboards
Full view
Table with Tool Chest
Thanks to all the folks at WoodOnline and Woodcentral for helping me when I had questions.
Next project: Something for Erin- a cherry/tiger maple console table for the entryway. Finally! “Real” furniture!
Just purchased one of these for our digital camera. Up till now we’ve only been able to put about 7 high quality photos on our 8MB card. We could ratchet down the photo quality for more pics, but that defeats the purpose of a 2megapixel camera. Now we’ll get around 200 pics on a card. Limiting factor just became our battery!
