Tablesaw Cabinet Upgrade Continued

  To cut the insert from melamine, I first positioned the insert where I wanted it. Next, I traced the outside edges with a pencil. Then I used a piece of the trim as a guide and traced a square pattern on the inside of the cutout area,5/8" from the edge.  I used my jigsaw with an 18 tpi blade to cut this area out.

To cut the rabbit area where the insert sits, I first placed the insert back in position on the melamine. I turned to my router and put in a 1/2" straight cutting bit. I also used a guide collar with a 5/8" O.D. on the router. Next, I got a couple of pieces of wood to use as a guide. I had to position these 0.5 x (5/8-1/2) = 1/16" away from the edge of the insert, so I turned to my allen wrenches and picked a 3/32" wrench to use as a spacer. That would give me 1/32" play between the insert and the melamine. I did this for all four sides, clamping each guide in place as I went along. Finally, all that was left was to take my router, with the depth set at 1/2", and routeout the rest of the melamine. When that was done, I used my chisel to square up the edges.

With the router insert cut out, I was ready to add support underneath, but then I noticed that some of the edges of the melamine had started to get little chips in them due to moving the piece around. So, I decided to add the protective trim around the edges next. I had already previously cut these pieces of fir to width and thickness, so adding them "simply" involved cutting them to length, mitering the corners, and gluing them in place. Having my new CMS with the laser guide really helped here.  I got the pieces all cut right the first time.  It was great!

To help position the pieces and add a little stability to the edges, I was going to use biscuits, but the trim was small enough to make it hard to position. I ended up using dowels instead, and this turned out to be a good choice.  I think it was actually faster using the dowels than it would have been using biscuits, and I got a lot better positioning to boot.

OK, a couple of steps have been skipped in the explanation.  On the left you see the table with new fence.  You'll note that the fence is made from Oriented Strand Board (OSB).  The reason being is that this material is fairly stable and easy to mill.  The second reason is that it was sitting in my wood stack just begging to be used.  The end result is a fence that is square to the table.

You'll also note the two round inserts I made for different sized bits. I first used the old router base as a template for creating the void in the table where the round inserts sit.  I used a pattern bit (like the one Nahm uses to create Dutchmen).  But, since the pattern bit requires a template that is bigger than the target piece, I had to create another template and go through a series of rabbiting and flush trimming operations to get the proper sized template.

Here is another close-up of the fence.  You'll notice a cut out for the bitin the fence.  This also serves double duty as a dust collection port.  This port, combined with the fact that the bit opening in the insert is quite small, translate to almost 100% dust collection efficiency.  I was amazed to say the least!

The Incra fence positioner.  Father's Day present.

I attached the Incra fence positioner with some toggle clamps so that I could remove and store the accessory fence easier.

Here is a picture of the nearly complete router table.  You'll note the port for the shop vacuum to connect.  The only thing left on the routertable is a tall fence, combined with a T-track to make clamping easier. I'm thinking that a melamine fence would work great here, with recessed bolts to attach it to the fence.

Below are some finished photos.  Well, nearly finished, but good enough for now.  I do want to add a little bit of cabinetry on the left side of the saw.  This will give me some fence and miter bar storage, as well as other miscellaneous storage.  You can never have too much, in my opinion.

So, why are these photos here? People were asking me about the stack of wood in the background. This lumber rack really helped to clean up the garage, but I did sacrifice a lot of cabinet space in doing so. Eventually I'll built an outdoor lumber storage area under my deck. Eventually...

If you would like to see a larger version of the above pictures, you can click on any of the photos below to get an even larger version.  These do take a lot longer to download, though.