Woodworking Router Table

Last winter, my husband Mike wanted to try his hand at cabinet making. He looked at so many different cabinet plans but could not find something to build. 

Space is a premium in our small woodworking shop so when he asked for a woodworking router table system, a bench top router table was the best solution.

Eagle America offers two bench top router table systems.

Kreg Router Table                  or  a             Freud Router Table

Yes, these are smaller woodworking router table systems but they get the job done!


Now, back to cabinet plans. Mike never found "the one" perfect cabinet plan to build so he designed his own. 


Mike was able to use his stile and rail bits and many of his other Eagle router bits for his cabinet project. While he was building the cabinet, it was exciting to see the majority of his woodworking clamps being used all at once. 


In the end the cabinet he made will become a family treasure. 


Not bad for a first effort.

I had a customer call the other day and the Eagle America catalog he used to order from was a catalog he borrowed from his father, that is not that unusual but the catalog was from 2000.  He is not the first customer to order from one of our catalogs from several years ago. I’ve asked "Why do you keep them so long" they usually say they keep it for reference. They would see a woodworking accessory or router bits that they had not seen before. So they hold on to it for when they need that item.

Do you know we carry over 6000 different woodworking tools? We have everything from; router table systems, router bits and router bit sets, saw blades and saw blade accessories, woodworking clamps, sanding supplies, wood carving tools, Kreg pocket hole jigs…. and the list goes on.

A few years back we ran a promotional offer to see who had the oldest catalog and I believe we had multiple customers that supplied us with catalogs from the late 80's and early 90's.

  Yesterday's Catalog                                      Today's Catalog
                                 

Wow what a difference, so don’t be so quick to toss that old Eagle America catalog it just may be worth something in the future.

When this happens I find one of my favorite sources of inspiration is woodworking books.

I turn to books when I feel like learning a new technique or for new project ideas such as building my own router table and fence.

• Woodworking Router Bits
• Table Saw Blades
• Wood Bandsaw Blades
• Scroll Saw Blades
• Woodworking Clamps
• Sanding Supplies
• Wood Carving Tools
• And more!

Wow! Looking over some of our recent blog posts I can tie a couple together, clocks and students.
One of the best parts of what I do here at Eagle America is talking to you, the customer.

In my time being the Customer Service Manager I must have spoken to thousands of our customers, I may have even spoken with you! It is always great to hear from people like Mr. Hazard, a high school woodshop instructor in California. 

I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to connect with him and donate some Woodworking Tools, Woodworking Accessories and Woodworking Router Bits to his woodshop over the last couple of years.

Mr. Hazard has sent me some photos of his students and some of the projects that they are making during this school year.

Here you can see a couple of mission clocks his students are making. You can see there is quite a bit of time and effort that the students are putting into these projects. They look great!



 


 

Here you see a student in his furniture making class working on her Pedestal table. I think she could have used one of our woodworking clamps to hold this a little more steady.











It is great to see the art of woodworking being passed down to the next generation, keep up the great work Mr. Hazard!  I am sure we will be seeing more of his students great work in the future.

 

I ordered a 20” x 24” oil painting for our 50th wedding anniversary and needed to frame it.

I wanted to use some nice cherry that I have so I set out to create a simple frame that would complement the painting and not compete with it.

I chose a simple profile that was easily done on my router table system with two simple bits, a 45 degree chamfer bit and a basic rabbeting bit. 
 
After milling the profiles on my router table system, I cut the pieces to length with mitered ends.

After applying glue to all the joints, I used some woodworking clamps, specifically, a simple picture framing clamp that keeps everything nice and square. I did not use any fasteners because I planned on adding a simple corner spline. 

After the glue had cured, I cut a slot in each corner using a simple shop made jig and made 1 pass through the table saw.
 

The splines were made to match the thickness of the saw kerf. A little glue was added and the splines were tapped in. After the glue dried I trimmed the excess wood off with a flush trim saw and sanded them flush.

I found that one of the easiest ways to hold a picture into a frame is to use fender washers that overlap the inset picture. The washers are slightly countersunk using a forstner bit just slightly larger than the washer.



 

All in all, a successful little project!