Router Lift

It's up-side-down. It normally goes the other way up.

I have a Black & Decker router that I was given as a birthday present quite a few years ago. It's not the worst router ever made, but it's not great. It came with a 3/8" head, and fortunately I found a 6mm collet to fit it, because 3/8" cutter bits are pretty bloody thin on the ground in New Zealand.

I have a much better Ryobi 12.5mm plunge router, so I stripped the Black & Decker down and attached it to a small table that clamps in the bench vice.

The other day, its depth-lock broke. This was a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to build this, which I should have done ages ago. It's a lockable router-lift.

What it does is lift the router up and down by means of a threaded spindle, which I made out of a 10x130mm hex-head bolt. I couldn't find one that was fully threaded right up the shaft, so I cut a new thread for it. The head of the bolt is buried in a plywood disk — you can see it in the picture — with a big bead to act as a winding handle. I may have to put a plywood cap over the bolt-head, just to ensure that it doesn't work itself out.

The bolt passes through a nut buried in the top of the frame, and on to a plywood cushion on the router itself. When I turn the handle, the router goes up or down, and can be locked firmly in place by means of the locking-nut. It will make my routing very much more precise than was really easily feasible when trying to hold everything in place against spring-pressure while fumbling around for the depth-lock.