The Shop Tour :D

[Bruce Page]

Sweet shop John. How do you like the Shop Fox pin router?

[John Coloccia]

Sweet shop John. How do you like the Shop Fox pin router?

As they say, you get what you pay for. Getting it aligned is a bit of a pain. Also, it comes with two flow controls regulating the outgoing air. So the control on top of the cylinder regulates the router going up and vice versa. This does NOT work well at all. When the router is sitting in the up position, and you hit the foot pedal, the first thing that happens is all the top of the cylinder becomes pressurized. The router immediately drops about half of it's stroke, nearly completely unregulated. This is due to the weight of the router. It will immediately move to the equilibrium point of equal pressure on both sides of the plunger plus the router weight, which is about half it's stroke. The flow control on the bottom of the cylinder then lets the air out slowly, but you've completely lost a great deal of stroke unless you don't mind plunging at a bazzillion miles an hour.

I tried all sorts of solutions. One that worked was to balance the weight of the router with bungee cords. This worked but was extrememly cumbersome. The solution that actually works PROPERLY is to spend $30 and buy 2 6mm SMC flow controls set to regulate the incoming air. Then you can set the one on top of the cylinder to retard the inrush of air when actuating the cylinder down, and now everything works as it should. I don't know why they don't just do this from the factory.

Now that I have it working, I think it works just fine. I prefer the old Shopsmith one, but I just don't have room in the shop for it. It IS nice being able to have both hands on the work as it plunges, though.

For the price, there's really nothing else like it that I know of. It's indispensible for plunging and following patterns on curved surfaces (like F-holes on a guitar, for example).

[Peter Bell]

John,

beautiful shed. Sorry, had to put that in. Beautiful set up. Is the top section part of a split level home.

Peter

[John Coloccia]

It's just a two story colonial with a walk out basement (due to the grade of the land). It's a split roof. Right above the shop is my living room and dining room. I think the original builders just ran out of money and didn't have the cash to finish it properly. There's stuff in there like one of the closets is plumbed to be a bathroom, including baseboard heat, but no bathroom was installed. Thinks like that.