Routing for router lift

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, I'll help my middle school students work on a dragon puppet for the upcoming May Fine Arts Festival parade, and offer further assistance if needed on their hydroponic window garden.

At the Eureka Springs School of the Arts wood shop, I've been installing a  router lift in a router table. This is part of my effort to ready the wood shop for summer classes, and the router lift allows the user to raise and lower the router in precise increments without climbing under the table to do so.

The process requires building a temporary frame around the router table lift base (while it is upside down on the router table) then removing it and using a template following router bit to exactly form the shape of the base routed to a depth equal to its thickness. After the temporary form is removed and the  center is cut out using a scroll saw to  cut along the inner line, the router table lift base will fit flush. Again, you see that words are insufficient when telling how to do something. A picture is required, and even that may not be enough. But if you were standing with me, you could ask questions, or even try it yourself.

This is a simple and useful technique but one that not all woodworkers are familiar with.

Make, fix, create, and assist others in learning lifewise.