# Home-made plunge router



## Masterofnone (Aug 24, 2010)

For my next project I need to cut a lot of mortises and I assumed the quickest way to do so would be to acquire a plunge router, but I didn't have $200 just lying around or the patience to hunt craigs list. I looked at some plunge routers online and decided they're simply designed, so I stuffed $20 into my wallet and headed to the hardware store.










Using the fixed plate as a template, I penciled out the design on some plywood. The base is 3/4" and the mount is 1-1/2". 










After some bandsawing and some careful bolt placement, I had the motor mount done.










Doing some test fitting the the baseplate. Now, you'll notice I'm going with a 4-upright design because the wood tolerences are too loose and I knew I'd get some sway back and forth if I tried to use only a pair of them.










Success! It needs a little tweeking, and a nice coat of varnish and wax on the bottom to let it slide better, but just freehand it produced fairly consistant cuts. Of course the springs provide the tension, while the threaded rods control my depth. There is no real easy way to set the depth and lock it down but it should serve its purpose well for now!

Hope you enjoyed looking at my little creation, as I know it was fun to build.

Special thanks to Matthias Wandel of woodgears.ca as several of his home-made (and much more elaborate tools) provided the inspiration to build this.

Bobby


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## lateralus819 (Jul 22, 2012)

Awesome idea. Instead of using the wing nuts, why not use regular nuts? Using 2 would lock them in place.


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## Masterofnone (Aug 24, 2010)

lateralus819 said:


> Awesome idea. Instead of using the wing nuts, why not use regular nuts? Using 2 would lock them in place.


You're a keen observer! Yes, the wingnuts were put on for ease of movement, but they vibrate out of place when the router is running... one of the few "tweeks" I was talking about.


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