Bosch EVS 1617 & Undertable Base

Jerry Palmer

Member
Messages
317
Location
Cedar Park, TX
The fella from Brown stopped by a few minutes after I got home from the day job yesterday. He had a box in his hands which he gave over to me. Yep, the new Bosch EVS 1617 router had arrived.

Got it and the undertable base I ordered with it out of the boxes and in a few minutes had the Old PC router base uninstalled from the router table and the Bosch base installed in its place.

I was in the process of making a couple drawers for the cabinet under the TS extension, so I installed a DT bit in the new router and went to work. The soft start feature will take some getting used to, sort of freaked me a little when I flipped the switch and it almost seemed like the motor paused before cranking up to operating speed. There seems to be plenty of variance in speed available via the speed control, at least based on the pitch of the motor. Cranked it up to top speed after playing the it for a bit.

Although there seems to be some play in the fine adjuster when the motor is locked in place, i.e. I can rotate the adjuster may a 16th of a turn or so, I didn't notice any backlash when making adustments with the motor unlocked. Set the bit depth to 1/4" and went after the drawer parts to make sliding dovetails.

The constant velocity circuitry seems to be working well as the speed increases noticeably for about a half second after the bit exits a cut, but then immediately drops off. The router breezed right through the 1/4" deep by 1/2" wide DT sockets in the 3/4" BORG whitewood or whatever plywood without being wasted out with a straight bit before hand.

All in all, I'm pleased with the performance of the router. The fit and finish are great and the controls are handily located. The straight up and down movement of the motor in the housing is a definite plus when compared to the PC (and maybe some others) whose depth adjustment requires turning the motor in the threaded base. The straight up and down leaves the power switch and VS control in the same place reference to the circumference of router.

Another benefit of the adjustment mechanism is the use of a detent pin for course depth adjustment. This allows me to drop the bit below the table, then raise it back up into the same detent hole and have the bit at the same depth as before as long as I did not fiddle with the fine adjustment knob. For folks like me using a table saw extension mounted router table, this allows me to get the router bit out of the way if I need to use that area of the tablesaw for the saw itself and then return the bit to the previous depth. Also handy for getting the bit out of harms way between uses without losing the setting of the bit depth.

The only thing lacking is a spindle lock for single tool bit changes, but I guess I can live without that, especially since I've been doing alright without it before.
 
Congrats Jerry - sounds like you made the right choice...... maybe.... No pictures? Can we really believe it happened?:dunno::rofl:

I'm going to be in the market for a new under-table-router later this year. Please continue to post updates!
 
Congrats Jerry. I prefer two wrenches, I don't think you'll mind it much. That is . . . if it exists . . . I see nothing ;).
 
Top