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A Router Table in a Drawer Chest Why I Even Have a Router in the First PlaceI have owned a router for a couple of decades. I bought it for a specific purpose and have made little use of it since then. I was re-shingling the front of the house (with red cedar royals). I didn't want to turn the corners and continue, at that time, around the sides of the house. So, I added corner boards (which are more common with clapboard siding). To fit in with the rest of the house, I made them from wide red cedar planks facing to the front. I also decided to cut grooves to match the grooves in the pillars on either side of the front porch. With a plunge router and a round nose / core box bit I was able to do this. I'm not saying it was easy. I had trouble holding the guide against the side of the plank to make the groove run straight and, I confess, I was a little bit afraid of the router, having never used one before. Maybe that's why it has sat largely unused for so long since then. Our house was built in 1926. We've made several repairs and improvements to it, the most ambitious being a complete redesign of the kitchen that resulting in all exterior doors and windows being thrown out and replaced with new ones in different positions. This was when we discovered that we couldn't get molding to match what was already on the house. I managed to modify some stock moulding on a table saw. But, this didn't work for the redesign of the master bathroom when I came to put the interior trim on the new windows. Here I wanted to echo the tilework. I would need to make entirely custom molding from suitable dimensional lumber, such as poplar. I knew that I would not be able to do this with a hand-held router. I needed a router table. But, there is no room for new floor-standing equipment in the basement space that I use as a workshop. And I can't buy anything bench-mounted because then what would I do for a bench?  A Router Table in a Drawer ChestThere was, however, in the workshop, a drawer chest. This was actually removed from the master bathroom that I'm remodeling and will be replaced with a new, modern one matching the vanity. Some time ago I put wheels on it and a nice solid top (it didn't have one because it was mounted inside a knee wall). Then it just became part of the basement clutter. I decided that I would try to modify this chest so that it could become a router table or a jigsaw table but could at any time be reverted to a drawer chest with a plain countertop. The router stuff would be stored in one of the narrow top drawers and the jigsaw stuff in the other. Construction Selection of Router BitsHaving spent almost nothing building a router table, I had to face that fact that carbide router bits could cost $20 or more. Although I'm not a great fan of Ryobi, I purchased from Home Depot three sets of their router bits that met my needs for the window molding project and almost everything I've done since. Here (mainly for my own records) is the "recipe" for the custom molding that I made for our master bathroom renovation. This treatment was applied to the front edge and sides of the interior sills of the windows. Thin strips were also made to wrap around the upper edge of the casing at the top of the windows. |