Router

I spent several days searching for a router of good quality and price. I decided on a Porter Cable and purchased it at sears when I purchased the dovetail template. Yesterday when I finished setting up the template I opened the router box and immediately knew I had a problem. The dovetail guide would not work with my new router and as I said in my last entry, it would not work with most new routers. In fact the only router I could find that the guide would work with was a Craftsman router.

Since I hadn't opened anything except the box, I taped it back up, got my receipt and headed back to Sears. The only router they had that would work was the same price as the Porter Cable so I decided to exchange it, but at first I was not comfortable.

When I was visiting family in the state of New York I asked my brother what he thought I should get if I were to buy a new router. He said it should be a plunge router of two horsepower and capable of using bits with a half inch spindle. I told him that would be overkill for me at this time in life.

The router I carried out of Sears was a plunge router of two horsepower and capable of using bits with a half inch spindle. It also had digital depth setting. I thought, "How to I justify this with my blog readers? Has this old man gone off the deep end? Did I give up quality for features?" I guess time will tell.

Tuesday morning I opened the box to get the operator's manual to read while I ate breakfast. My first observation was that the Porter Cable had a nice carrying case to store the router in when not in use. The Craftsman didn't. In my mind that was a negative. At first the learning curve for the Craftsman was another negative, but as I continued to read I began to realize that I had purchased a pretty nice router.

Let us begin, as we did in the last entry, with a picture of the box it came in.

I took it out of the box and put it on the floor for another shot.

A little different looking that my 45 year old one, which was also a Craftsman.

I installed the template guide in the base of the router and went out to the shop for another picture.

When I return from Arizona I will let you watch me try to make a joint, but before we leave this entry, let's say a bit more about the plunge router.

The plunge router allows the operator to set the bit so it is just touching the surface. A button can then be pressed to record that spot as a zero reading. The router can then be precisely set for depth of operation using the digital readout. The router can be temporarily set at any depths in between with no effect on the final adjustment. That is a great advantage over a non plunge router as it allows several passes for deep routing. The digital readout allows adjustments as fine as one sixty-fourth of an inch. This router also allows for convenient adjustment when using with a router table, which will be the topic of the next blog entry. It is on my schedule to set the table up tomorrow morning.