Years ago I made a quick, nothing fancy pin router for one piece that I was working on. Now, I'm ready to build it RIGHT to use frequently in the shop. I'm seeking thoughts, ideas, suggestions, etc, from anyone who's ever built one of these tools or has given thought to doing so.

Here's the basics. I have a 1960's era Craftsman RAS, minus the saw. I have completely restored the vertical support, the arm and the carriage from which the saw hung. In my original one that I made years ago I simply made a box that mounted to the plate (carriage) that slides horizontally underneath the arm. A router was mounted into that box. It worked perfectly for that one job.

This time around I want to rig it a bit differently. I'll be hanging the fixed base of a Bosch 1617EVSPK from the carriage. I can get one of those fixed bases cheap from the auction site. They're always on there. What I'm considering doing, and here's where your thoughts and suggestions may prove to be helpful, is to take the fixed base to a machine shop and have them cut off the bottom portion of the base. I want to leave enough of the base to hold the router and have the raising and lowering mechanism still be functional. In other words, I want to be able to fine tune it more than just with the lift of the RAS. But, I don't want the bottom of the base to be in my way. I'll figure out someway to hook up some DC.

The question is: What are some thoughts for building a device to hang the fixed base from the carriage. I would like to have built in adjustments on this device so that I can make sure that the router bits are perfectly 90 degrees to the table underneath.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps someone has already done this before, in which case no need to reinvent the wheel!

Thanks!