Which do you prefer: Handheld router, or router table?
Which do you prefer: Handheld router, or router table?
Until fairly recently I owned just one router. I bought it, immediately installed it in the table it came with, and it has come out of the router table exactly once since then to cut a couple slots. I have since bought one of those little "trim routers" but I still do the bulk of my routing work in the table.
I'm curious, how do the rest of you prefer to work? Do you mostly use your router handheld or in a table?
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I don’t see this as a topic of preferences, really, because only a minority of tasks can be done equally well on both.
Watching old episodes of the New Yankee Workshop, I find that Norm often uses a router handheld to do a job that I would do in the table, is why I ask.
You can do many jobs with both, but usually one is a clearly better fit for the job. Only for some things is it a true tossup. Maybe for someone really skilled, like Norm, there’s a higher number of jobs that could be done both ways. For myself, I fear the router and plan any use of it really carefully.
Was Norm in the shop when this happened? Or on site somewhere?
I have seen very few episodes of the New Yankee Workshop outside of the shop.
Quite often, while putting a decorative edge on something (a roundover, ogee, something like that) on a board, he'll rest that board on what looks like a mat of that "eco friendly made of old blue jeans" insulation, and rout it with no actual clamps. Or he'll secure it with dogs to the workbench.
I don't like using a standard router out of the table much either; in high school shop class I had one scare the ever loving hell out of me. Standard Porter Cable router, two knob handles in a "normal" base, with a switch up at the top of the motor. Holding this thing above the work because it's a standard base, I held the router with one hand and reached up to turn it on with the other. The starting torque of the motor loosened the one knob I was gripping the tool with and it spun in my hand. I'm still suspicious of the devious little bastards 20 years later.