My New Router Station

Published Feb. 19, 2010 at 6:18 p.m.

I’ve wanted a good router station for quite awhile now, and so I decided to build one.

It has an MDF cabinet, to match the other cabinets in my shop, and a laminated top, with white Formica on the table-top and fence. It has a Woodpecker’s V2 router lift as well.

I got the plans for the cabinet out of Wood Magazine #192 (Sept. ‘09), and the plans for the fence system out of Wood’s “Best Ever Router Tricks and Jigs (2008 edition).

This project stretched me a little as a woodworker, learning to laminate Formica, and especially getting the router lift hole and rabbet done correctly. But amazingly, everything worked as it’s supposed to, and the table-top and fence came out exactly as they should.

The cabinet, however, seemed to have a mind of its own. For some reason, the MDF sides decided to curl up on me after I cut the dados in them. The plans called for 3/8” dados, though I’ve always heard that you should cut only 1/3 the thickness of the material, which would be 1/4”. Whatever the case, I had to fight with those sides the entire way through the cabinet construction process.

All-in-all, though, things went pretty well, and I’m the proud owner of a router station!

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