A few years ago I build a top from aluminum to make a router table. The other day I decided to start to build a simple cabinet under it to help control the dust and hold all the associated bits and garbage. I used a Dewalt router and a Router Raizer that sure make adjusting the heights easy. I copied Dizzy’s dust collection idea for the fence and the cabinet.
I don’t know how many of you have used a Router Raizer, but removing the man-hole-cover can be a pain and I’m always afraid that it will fall off the magnet and hit the spinning bit. Below is a picture of how the wrench fits in the Router Raizer.
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Some times the feather boards get in the way and when I need to tweak the height, I have to move the feather board.
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I was at Harbor Freight the other day and saw a right angle drill thingy that all of a sudden turned on a light in my head. My thought was to adapt this to the new table and make a simple handle and dial for this and life would be easy. This unit came with a “Jacob’s chuck” but since I already built the cabinet I didn’t have the room to use it. If I had the room, I would only have to chuck up a 3/16” hex bit in the chuck and mount it and I would be off to the races.
I ended making a small adapter that had a 3/8-24 thread and a 3/16” hex bit that only took about ½ the height so it would fit in the cabinet.
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Once I make a simple handle out of aluminum, shoulder bolt and a plastic tube, I assembled it all and measured how much the Router Raizer would move the router up on one full turn. It appears that this right angle drill unit is 1:1 so each revolution would be .050/inch. I made a dial out of UHMW material and at work we use the cad software to make a dial that was laminated and attached to the UHWM disk.
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Now, all I have to due is rotate this handle CCW to go up and CW to go down. Next I need to decide how to unlock the lock so I don’t have to go into the cabinet to adjust the height.
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Just thought you might want to use this idea for your router table needs.
Jeff
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