Router tables

[John Whitley]

I'm (finally!) in the same boat as Chris Pyle: we've bought a house and I have space for a shop. First order of business regarding machinery is a router table. I'm currently also looking at the Excalibur cast iron top, steel base, with the JessEm Mast-R-Lift II. I may have a go with the Incra variant of the JessEm lift, which has metal rings that lock to the lift top via rare-earth magnets.

I'm probably going to give the Wixey DRO a try, unless someone's had negative experience with it. I love me some Mitutoyo, but the Quill DRO seems highly problematic with a router table. Am I completely missing something, or would the readout end up under the table? With above-table lift adjustment, it would be difficult to impossible to adjust the lift while also viewing the DRO. Likewise, that seems to preclude the option of an under-the-table dust collection box.

[Chris Hall]

The Wixey readout on my router table is a piece of shit. It likes to freeze, becoming unresponsive to shifts in position, until you've moved the lift a significant distance. Then it wakes up, however it cannot be relied upon to indicate the correct position.

I picked a 6" i-Gaging linear scale with remote readout for the router lift, having had good experience so far with a 12" version on my planer. I couldn't conveniently mount it to the router lift however, so I am stuck with the Wixey for the time being. I think there will be a way to mount the i-Gaging unit to the lift, but it will require some metal fabrication, milling, etc. - no time for that at the present.

[John Whitley]

Thanks for the info on the Wixey, Chris. I'll give it a pass, then. A DRO would be nice, but not having that solved immediately isn't a showstopper.

[Chris Hall]

It's always possible that I have a defective Wixey readout and that my experience is not representative generally.

A digital caliper will serve largely the same function, if a little less conveniently, and you could fulfill your lusting for Mitutoyo.

[John Whitley]

It's always possible that I have a defective Wixey readout and that my experience is not representative generally.

I did some digging on reviews, and it seems that this particular Wixey model has recurrent issues. A lot of people love them, but really disturbingly high proportion have exactly the kinds of problems you describe. Lots of 1-star reviews. Could easily be that both stories are true. If there were just some bad lot issues or manufacturing inconsistency, I might gamble with trying a few and returning them until I got a "golden" one. But it's hard to sort out what the story is. May just be outright design or operational problems, and they're all bad.

A digital caliper will serve largely the same function, if a little less conveniently, and you could fulfill your lusting for Mitutoyo.

I've got the Mitutoyo 6", which is my constant shop companion. <3

As it turns out, I had an opportunity to get a floor model of the BenchDog/Rockler cast iron table along with the cabinet. Started setup yesterday, will finish in the next few days. Since this is my first cast iron, I also sprung for a Starrett 36" straightedge.

The Incra magnetic plate setup is interesting. We'll see how that goes...:

The Bench Dog cast-iron table with the steel cabinet base.

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Incra/JessEm lift

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Incra/JessEm lift with magnetic plate

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[Chris Hall]

Looks pretty swish

[John Whitley]

A quick follow-up: I've used the new table in anger for some new stand prototypes. (I ended up designing and building two karakumidai for the Braid Society conference here in Seattle, WA a few weeks back.) So far, so good. By which I mean "absolutely dream-like compared to any router table I've ever used before". I still need to do final squaring-up of the router spindle to the table, but it was close enough for prototype-grade and primarily aesthetic finish work.

An unexpected benefit of the Incra version of the lift: there are optional magnetic plates with extra vents machined into them for better downward chip collection. They don't benefit all cuts, but when they do, they're amazing. A run of double roundovers (think semicircular) on 30mm rail end grain produced nearly zero ejected chips.

Instead of going with a built-in DRO, I picked up a standalone iGaging digital height gauge. Seems decent at first blush. I'll report back as I gain experience with it.

[Chris Hall]

The standalone i-gaging unit - is that like an Aigner Distometer?

[John Whitley]

Chris, this is what I picked up:

iGaging Digital Electronic Height Gauge with Magnetic Base, 6 Inch

It's obviously not going to be as seamless as a good built-in DRO, but it has other uses around the shop.