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I’ve been on a shop organization kick over the last few weeks. While figuring out where to store all of the little things needed for making guitars, I discovered the best (IMHO) tools sold at Harbor Freight: US General tool cabinets. Here’s what a super coupon helped me get a few weeks ago:



As I got close to filling this one up, I started thinking about the space my stand-alone router table takes up, and how I really need, but don’t have, a stand-alone sharpening station. I should spend more time sharpening than routing, I said to myself. Plus, I need more storage for little stuff (gosh, I have so much little stuff). So, I did some online research on cast iron router table wings for the table saw. The important thing to watch out for is that commercial router tables, including these cast iron wings, come with different sized cutouts for the router plate. Having already invested in a really nice router lift (Kreg brand), I wanted a cast iron wing that would fit it. The Peachtree brand cast iron wing was a perfect fit. Here’s the wing and router lift installed:





One tricky part is that the Kreg lift has hold-down bolts in each corner in addition to leveling bolts, but the Peachtree wing only has the leveling bolts. I dealt with this by grinding notches in the cast iron lower lip and just attaching the hold-down bolts to nuts through the notches. Worked like a charm.

Another tricky part was that, according to the instructions, I should have mounted this on the other side of the saw. There was a good reason for that: The mounting bolts are hard to reach on the motor side of the saw. But, I really wanted the router on the left, so I made it work.

Moving the router to the table saw made room for my sharpening station and small item storage, which another super coupon helped buy:



The granite plates and Worksharp have been here awhile, but now they have a permanent space of their own.

I feel I'm making slow but steady progress in my desire to have a cleaner and better organized shop.

Nice!

What do you use a router table for?

Ed--

A few different tasks:

1. Routing truss rod channels.

2. Pattern routing some curved parts, like body mold layers.

3. Using a roundover bit to put a rounded edge on a board, then at the table or band saw, slicing off a strip of what will be kerfed lining (after it is kerfed).

4. Jointing top and back center seams by shimming out the outfeed side of the fence.

5. Sanding jig making by cutting 1/4" x 1/4" ledges on convex shapes (Kevin Ryan, disc sander type jigs).

6. Just general woodworking stuff, too.

Can't have too many drawers and those roll-aways are super handy. I deleted my router table and went to a small table saw but I wasn't using the router table anyway for my work flow.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

That looks like a nice set up, Don,
Having a router base mounted in a table saw wing can be very handy and doesn't take up any additional real estate. I have a wooden extension table so I just drilled a hole in it for the bit to poke through and mounted an extra 690 router base I bought off of ebay. I've been thinking of mounting another smaller base for the trimmers I use, but I may make a cut out for drop in plates like I used on my old router table (similar to the peachtree insert).
Setting up a sanding station is on my "to do" list. I am still at the point where I take things out of a drawer or pull them down from the shelf, go find where I left the cutting oil, or refill the water trough before getting down to the business of sharpening. Your shop looks much better organized.

Clay--

I'm only showing "after" photos on the things I recently improved; big parts of the rest of the shop still need work. But it is progress.

I'm cooking up an idea for a chip/dust collection box around the router lift. One of the commercially available boxes would be great, but there are only so many places to attach things to the underside of the Peachtree cast iron wing, so I think I need to build my own. I'm trying really hard to be good at collecting dust at the source.

Don, if it helps, here is what I did.

I made a flange that bolted to the existing mounting holes on the router wing and then screwed the Rockler collection box to it. I also mounted the power switch to the collection box as well. The setup seems to work fine other than I cannot tap the stop button with my leg as easily as I could if it were mounted on the front. The dust collection on the blade guard of the sawstop moves over to the fence on the router. The 4" port on the back of the sawstop moves over to the Rockler collection box. I have a 2" blast gate on the smaller hose that's up out of view and a 6" gate on the drop.





Brad

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That's a pretty good setup, Brad! Can I ask: Are there only two mounting holes on the Bench Dog cast iron wing, the two near the outside edge? If so, does your flange work OK with just the two mounting holes? I guess if I use something unyielding and hard to bend/break for the flange, it will work fine. Knowing that you just use the two holes will give me more confidence that it will work.

My idea was to maybe support the inside edge of the box with strong Velcro stuck to the motor housing, and use the two mounting holes as the real support. But maybe the Velcro is unnecessary.

It's four bolts total. You can just see the bolt on the left at the very edge of the photo. I think Benchdog makes a box that fits with the 4 hold pattern built into the wing, but I already had the Rockler box so just went with making the flange.

Yeah, if there are only two on the same side that gets tricky!

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Yeah, I only have the two threaded holes near the outside edge.

I still might build something myself. It's just a box with a piano-hinged door and a 4" dust collection port in the side or bottom. I already have a blast gate on this line to regulate the suction. Maybe I can inset some rare earth magnets in the otherwise unsupported inner edge of the box, and just bolt it to the two holes at the outside edge. We'll see. Thanks for the inspiration!

My rural Ace Hardware sells Craftsman tools. They have a 5 drawer tool cabinet that is two separate boxes one atop the other on sale for $99

Ed

We went to the local Lowes this spring after they closed all the Orchard Hardware Supply stores here in California (they bought 'em out in 2013 or so). So the lady in the tool section said "Now we have Cr*psman"!

As with many things, tool chests have a quality versus cost spectrum. I can’t justify the cost of Snap-On despite the excellent quality, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Craftsman and Husky lines feel kind of flimsy, and I would rather pay more to get more. I kicked the tires (figuratively speaking) on several options, and the US General line stuck out as having pretty high quality for pretty low cost.