The horror! The Horror!

Bill Lantry

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Inside the Beltway
Hey, folks,

So, picture the scene. There I am, standing at the router table, piece of maple in hand. The bit is large, so I've set the speed low. I hit the switch. Whiiiirrrr goes the router. I move the maple to the fence, when suddenly....

as I watched in horror, the bit began to descend. Unaided. Beneath the table. Out of sight. In the midst of much consternation and many bad words, I hit the shut off switch...

Now, just to give you the sense of it, it's one of these:

HitachiM12V.jpg


it's mounted in one of these:

main_unlift.jpg


geez....

So I take the whole thing out of the table. Somehow, the plunge mechanism has 'un-plunged', hence the precipitous descent. And no matter how hard I push, it ain't going back down. I told myself 'don't push so hard, William, you don't know what you're doing, you're going to break something.' So I made my second big mistake. I let go...

And, of course, with the release of pressure, the router itself actually pops apart. Literally. The two plunge guide bars come right out of their housing, followed by their respective springs, and one small bar on each side. Oh, and a little round brass cylinder from one side (what happened to the other, I'll never know.)

So now, instead of a fully functional router table, I've got the humpty dumpty of routers. No horses, and for sure nobody to help me figure out how to put it together again. How hard can it be?

Well, it turns out, pretty hard. After half an hour, I give up on trying to get the springs back in there right and the mechanism to work. The springs and other pieces go in a drawer. After all, I don't need the plunge function, right?

Right. But... I do need for it to stay secure on the router lift, and in one place... and part of what's now not installed is the plunge lock. So, ok... looks like there's a threaded depth stop rod. With nuts already on it. In fact, that might have been what slipped. How to keep it from happening again?

Well, a couple washers fit the bill. But how to keep the nut from working loose? Well, let's try a lock washer. Put the whole thing back together. Put it back in the table. et, voila...

It doesn't sound quite right. Of course, I'm expecting the bit to fly off, so I've got it surrounded with big scraps of wood. Once it goes for about 30 seconds, I leave the shop... I figure it's safer to let in run for 3 or 4 minutes with a fire door between it and me... ;)

Nothing blows up... ;)

So, unlike the movie, there's a happy ending. And no blood so far. Got another picture frame made. Looks like it might hold up... :thumb:

Thanks,

Bill
 
I did that last Spring. I was working on my house, pushing over gravel piles that the gravel contractor was bringing. There was just enough time between loads to duck into the shop and do a bit of woodworking. I thought I was multi-tasking quite well.

Then I hear his truck pull up as I am redoing the router bit. He dumps the gravel, leaves to get another load, I push it over with my tractor then go back into the shop. Yep, you guessed it. In my mind my next move was to route the groove for the glass panel to fit in. What I should have done was tighten the router bit collet up first. Luckily I saved the project, but man was that the deepest glass rabbet I have ever had in any project I have ever made :)
 
The two plunge guide bars come right out of their housing, followed by their respective springs, and one small bar on each side. Oh, and a little round brass cylinder from one side (what happened to the other, I'll never know.)

Bill I believe if you look inside just behind the thumb locking lever you will find where this goes, it is part of the locking mechanism.
 
Bill I see the problem just by looking at the pics. You've got a green router, and the picture of the router lift clearly shows that it's made for gray routers. Maybe you can exchange it for a green router lift.

Glad I could help - :wave:
 
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