Some days you’re just lucky

For a long time I’ve been looking forward to the day I could buy a router table. A decent system can cost in excess of $1,000 and as we are on a budget, this wasn’t something I could go and splash out on, though I was putting some money aside every month for one.

For months I’ve been researching router tables and had narrowed it down to a Woodpeckers, Jessem or Incra systems which isn’t really narrowing it down at all!! I was pretty hooked on a Woodpeckers table with an Incra lift but then I came across a review about the Incra system which talked about how repeatable it was, that is, you can route a piece of wood, change all the settings and then come back months later and dial in the router (to a resolution of 0.001″ / 0.025mm) to produce an identical cut to the one you did months ago.

Anyone who has used a router table will be familiar with the usual procedure of the easing up of the fence clamps, knocking the fence back and forth, taking measurements and running test cuts until you get it right, which can get pretty tedious if you are making lots of different cuts. As we need to make a lot of identical cuts, e.g. for all the sash windows, this seemed a great system for such a projects.

Again for months I’ve been looking for a second hand one and more recently I was looking specifically for an Incra system. Unfortunately decent router tables don’t come up often craigslist or ebay and a specific brand even less, but that was until this last Friday …

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By the time I saw the post it was 20 hours old, so kicking myself for not spotting it earlier I replied and surprise, surprise I get a reply and following a phone call we arrange to drive down on Saturday morning to pick it up!!!! I wasn’t going to count my chickens until we were driving back with it in the car, but I was feeling pretty optimistic.

Fortunately everything went to plan and the seller Joe was very pleasant to deal with and we also bought a couple of sets of nice router bits from him. There were one or two components missing from the table, but Joe said that if he came across them he’d mail them on. Also if they never turn up, I’ll just buy them from Incra. As stated in the advert, it is in excellent condition.

I’m super, super excited about using this tool so thank you again Joe and I think our workshop is now pretty much complete!!!