this is the cheapest router table in the world it cost me $3.88 to make in this video I'll show you how you can make this today and why it's actually a terrible idea because we can do better and you don't have to break the budget doing it and if you want something more capable than this I'll show you some clever ways to upgrade your trim router without spending a fortune I also have a special surprise for you for the first time publicly I'm going to reveal a project that I've been working on for over 2 years and it does a few things no trim router has ever been able to do until now I think you're going to love it this video is sponsored by Shopify we need to get something out onto the table you don't need a fullsize rer table now hear me out a big trap beginner Woodworkers fall into is forking out thousands of dollars for a floor standing router table now do I want one of course I do do I have the space for one not really do I have the budget for one I think so but she says no do I actually need one for the majority of the work that I currently do not really now with the outlier set aside I I see you typing right now I bet most of you watching this video are just like me if you had a big rer table you'd use it twice a year but what no one is talking about is that if you were to spend the money on a proper RoR table you would immediately contract HSS HSS is a disease plaguing millions of Woodworkers around the world you're probably wondering what HSS is and if you have it or are in danger of Contracting it and my friend I have some very bad news for you I think you probably already have HSS and this little router table trick is your first step in ging freedom from horizontal surface syndrome that's right when you add a permanent horizontal surface in your shop within minutes things magically appear it's the strangest thing and that shiny new $1,000 cast iron router table transforms into the most expensive yet stable countertop for boxes from Jeffrey Bezos and crap from your kids hi my name is Drew and I struggle with HSS and that's why I made this you're probably wondering why I'm using the worst building material at Home Depot for this build well my first idea was to show how anyone could build this by getting a 2tx 4T project panel that could fit in their car then I saw they were selling for $39 gross a quarter sheet of plywood for $40 after throwing up in my mouth I noticed something slightly less ridiculous out of the corner of my eye OSB and since this is a YouTube video and the most ridiculous thing usually wins I thought it would be actually funny to try to build the cheapest router table using the crappiest of materials so we could both find out together whether it's even possible now there's a good chance a lot of you watching this have scrap plywood into you I'd say congratulations you're ahead and you can build this for free without getting OSB given that you own a trim router which a lot of people do but even if you don't own a trim router I found one of the cheapest ones at Harbor Freight for 45 bucks or $35 if you have this coupon so best case scenario this is free worst case like me you spend under $50 and save a bunch of money I almost didn't show this trick because it's ridiculously simple however when I was beginning my woodworking journey I remember the first time I saw someone do this and I thought to myself that's brilliant I didn't know that you could do that with a router now some of you may be frantically typing away in the comments you fool if you do that you'll lose a/ inch of cutting length and you'll need to buy longger machine screws to account for the thicker material and to that I say yeah I see you and I agree that's why I said this is a terrible idea now if you do do this you will want to find some machine screws that are slightly longer and thankfully I had some on hand if all you're doing is making cutting boards and you need to do a quick round over on your project this is good enough but what about pattern in template routing yeah this is perfect for that provided you have a quality template bit like this one but what about a Fine Furniture joint let's give it a try have you ever seen a walnut and maple box joint made on an OSB router table using a quick and dirty box joint jig made from a 2 for well here you go I'm got to be honest I nailed it not really I actually messed it up I didn't account for the material thickness so the fit wasn't right at all like not even close I mistakenly cut 1/ in tall joints but the material was 3/4 of an inch thick I didn't think about it so I joined them together into to end ran them through my thickness planer and I was scared to put them through the planer 1 by one I asse the planer knives would rip up the fragile box joint fingers but to my surprise putting them together like this worked very well and in a matter of minutes my material was playing down to half an inch and now this box joint is perfect nope see that's the problem with YouTube videos is you can fake anything if you look at this tear out on the maple from the planer G no worries some strategically placed sawdust will make that disappear and now this joint is actually perfect unless you look at it from this side and then you see how it's flawed and how I am not a perfect woodworker but not bad for the first box joint I've ever made in my life you're probably wondering what about a fence well that's really easy step one cut a hole in the board step two rip it step three it's called use 99 cent spring clips this is a budget router table what about storage well this is actually my favorite part and the whole reason why I got into this step one cut a tiny hole in the board step two hang it on a nail step three you avoided HSS congratulations now while this is a really cool idea and it will get you by if the budget is tight or you're in a pinch there's obviously a lot of problems and shortcomings with doing something quick and dirty like this the good news is we can do a lot better and so I want to show you how I built this this idea started 4 years ago while I was on vacation at Disney World in 2020 here's the first sketch I made during Rona it all came from the paino of not having a floor space in my shop for a dedicated router table I wondered if there was a way to take some scrap plywood quickly secure it to a work surface use it and then when I'm done remove the router and hang it on the wall out of the way I honestly forgot that I started this project 4 years ago what you're seeing me build right now is version five and we've come a long way there's at least three lessons that I want to call your attention to that we can all learn from from this four-year-old brain shout of mine first good things take time and creativity is inefficient all right well technically that was two but B good things can come from Rona REM 3 going to Disney World Isn't entirely a waste of money why is this so expensive now here's another tip I learned along the way you can cut nonfer metals like this T track with most woodworking tools just make sure you use eye protection and I like to tape the areas I'm going to cut for a cleaner cut speaking of tape I get a lot of questions about this stuff because double-sided tape for woodworking is hard to come by do not buy the junk at the Home Center you are wasting your money trust me I use two Brands interchangeably they seem the same to me one is spect tape and one is ipg you can search those on Amazon I'll link to the ones that I use below I have different widths and I don't like to bombard people with buy this tool and use my feeli link and links in the description it kind of rubs me the wrong way as a viewer and I know you feel the same way and as a Creator it makes me feel dirty that said when I don't mention what a tools that I'm using I get comments and emails and DMS true story from people all the time asking hey where'd you get that pattern bit or what brand of tape is that or what's that orange thing that looks like a camping chair which is called a Bora centipede table by the way um I'm just always surprised that people don't check the links in the description and I hate kind of promoting it uh so in case it's you that's okay welcome to the dark side of social media marketing you're now monetized links in the description and of course the bits that I'm using are from bids and bits because this is an official YouTube video I get it but don't worry no total boat in this build maybe total boat baby Keith wrong Channel this little jig that I made using double-sided tape it's so spoton I didn't even use glue or screws to put the te Tre in I know kind of breaking code there I'll probably will at some point but I can't imagine a better way to put te Trek in that is perfect so easy thing to do if you ever need to do this what I'm doing here is I'm drilling some through holes that are 3/4 of an inch and then I'm going to connect them partially through to make a cool little channel for a tea track clamp now the cool thing about this design is there's so many different ways that you can attach this to a surface and this is one of the easiest ways if you have a surface that is overhanging you can take this and clamp it from the bottom really quickly I like that this other way that I'm going to use involves using MF holes now I have this really cool thing called the parf guide you can make CNC accurate esque holes using a drill and how you would do it in this situation is you would just take the ruler that they give you and use all these little jigs to make a pilot hole so these are perfectly spaced to match up with any commercially grade mft however what I'm trying to show you is that you don't need this $300 parf guide system to do this if you already have an mft table you can clamp a scrap piece of wood underneath like I'm doing here and then use a pattern bit to transfer those holes down to your scrap piece of wood which eventually becomes a very accurate template based off of your mft or multi-function table then instead of taking a $300 ruler to your piece you just attach this little guy using double-sided tape to any fixture that you want to make in this case a router table and you can make holes that perfectly line up with your mft table now this mft table I made using the parf guide this works with a festival mft table it works with the cheaper Bora mft table if you have a Craig table it would work with that this is a really cool jig where if you have one of these tables all you need is a pattern bit scrap wood some clamps and you can do this to any of your jigs that you make it's really cool you may be wondering why I'm doing this and it's because of this trick right here these are called TSO Smart Connect dogs they're brilliant and I believe if I'm right Ron pul one of my friends had a role in coming up with this I think I'm not sure but what's really awesome about these is they stick through and as you turn them this cam turns and locks two pieces together so you can securely attach anything to an mft table and you have clearance pretty cool now I love a good trim router but the problem I've always run into is that the bases they come with are typically really small and as a result not very stable I've also struggled to find the right sized aftermarket base that could just live on my router and rarely come off so I decided just to make that elusive goldilock size base for myself but I wanted it to be great clear durable wanted a high quality handle off on the side for for stabilization and control and the most important part I wanted it to work with a two-part template system so I could just drop it into a scrap of plywood and quickly convert it to a router table when I need it now if that sounds like something that you want I got you I'm finally releasing this router base system to the public and there's some really cool tricks the system does that I haven't seen anyone else pull off yet and since you may be short on time and it's a lot of effort to go and figure out the math and Source all these parts for a project like this I've gone ahead and sourced all the screws t-bolts knobs fence brackets dust ports and packed them into a build box that includes the base templets plants and a private buildong video so if you don't want to Source all of this stuff on your own and figure out the math by trial and error you can pick this up at witw works. shop there's a link below the only thing you'll need besides a router is some plywood your choice of te track and a few router bits to do the work this oversized base has some tricks up its sleeve and I'm about to show you two of them and how we're able to pull them off here I'm installing heat set inserts for my favorite feature that's coming up heat inserts are used a lot in 3D printing they let you put threads into plastic I'm using a cheat press to keep things aligned and true and I'm also using a machine tap and a pricey acrylic tap from McMaster Car to tap threads into the base tapping into acrylic is not as straightforward as you might think you just can't use any tap and you can't rush the process you may be wondering why I'm tapping threads into an acrylic rder base and the answer is the Jimmy pin duh what's a Jimmy pin I'm glad you asked a couple months ago we showed an early version of this to our patreon group and the number one comment people made was are you going to include a start pin with it you would use a start pin if you were starting kind of a really dangerous cut and you need something to reference on especially for ingrain a lot of big expensive router tables have it but trim router tables usually don't have it I love the idea of a start pin but my friend Steve who is the brains behind all this said it can't be done it's just there's too much to think about and the comments kept coming in Steve was getting cornered and he was Resolute with no we're not going to put a pin in this thing and I just made the comment to him that real design is problem solving and if he were actually good at designing he'd figure out how to create a start pin about an hour later Steve had received 10 bids from companies overseas who would make this pin for us because we couldn't find one that would work now the reason we call them Jimmy pins is there is this one manufacturer who got back to us immediately and when we kept asking hey could you do this could you do this he just finally said I can make you anything that you draw which was music to Steve's ears because within 5 minutes Steve had drawn up what we wanted that we could not find and about 5 minutes later Jimmy all the way from China said I can do it his name is Jimmy Yin and about an hour later Steve and I realized we don't think his name is Jimmy and that just kind of makes us laugh and so we call these Jimmy pins I'm happy to report to you that when we got these Jimmy pins in Steve cried he had never seen something that he had drawn up actually manufactured so was pretty cool so I love the Jimmy pins and he won't admit it but Steve does too if you're new to the channel hopefully by now you've picked up that we're all about Sawdust and sarcasm and I don't like to do things the normal way so and I might get in trouble for this in a moment I'm going to attempt to sneak famous lines from these eight movies in the ad read let me know if you catch them all oh one more thing I'm not telling the sponsor I'm doing this so I hope I don't get in trouble one of the most common questions I get is are you a full-time YouTuber yet and the answer shocks everybody I was able to go full-time making videos on the internet 18 months ago when I had only 4,000 subscribers on YouTube and the reason I was able to earn a full-time living with that small amount of Subs was this say hello to my little friend Shopify is a Commerce platform that allows you to start grow and manage a business so if you have a product idea like this one Excuse me while I whip this out you can easily offer it to anyone in the world my main business behind sarcastic YouTube videos is selling 3D printed accessories for track saws and now trim routers but you can sell anything to anyone you can make a healthy living selling Bumblebee tuna Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet outperforming the competition by up to 36% usually when my phone buzzes I say dooo Kaka but these are my favorite notifications my favorite thing about Shopify is this right here underneath this video you can see all of the top solutions that I offer for your Workshop problems and it's made a huge difference in my business go ahead make my day now even if you don't have a social media presence like me millions of people in over 170 countries sell online in person and across borders using Shopify to power their businesses every day now if you have an idea for a product or a business what are you going to do bleed on me no you're going to go to shopify.com witworks to get started so you can build the life you want when you make your first sale you're going to ask did we just become best friends if you skip this part of the video I only have one thing to say to you you're killing me Smalls one thing about woodworking is you can get seriously hurt in a fraction of a second and I'm curious which tool you find the most dangerous or are the most in at by I'm personally scared of the jointer but the router table is right up there on the list for me this is a time when I was glad I was using a push Block it's easy to get focused on your workpiece and totally forget that the router bit is going to come out the other end which happened here and better this blocked in my fingers I'd also love to know if you've ever encountered the same problems I've had with te trck and t-bolts upon further review it seems there's no real standard with trra and t-bolts I have four different brands of trra three different trra router bits in three different brands of t-bolts and they're all different and it's all mix and match it's a mess it's like the tea track manufacturers were Apple before there is Apple I mean every interface is proprietary there's a USB a BC lightning Port joke in here somewhere but I just can't seem to find it this hole that I'm drilling right now was the jumping off part for this entire system 4 years ago everything I've shown you in this video is based off the idea that this router table shouldn't even have a base it should borrow a base from another tool or workbench and when it's not in use it can hang vertically on the wall thus making it impossible for you to fall prey to HSS this is literally the last wall space I have left and yes I'm fully aware of the irony of hiding an affordable DIY router table behind one of the world's best dust collectors but what can I say I'm a complicated guy now here are four hacks you can use to secure a table depending on your setup the first two you've seen if you have an existing mft table you can clamp the piece on with tracks saww clamps but I don't like how the clamps usually get in the way the second option is using the TSO power lock dogs they're just so cute the third option is a very old trick if you have a table saw or a workbench with a good amount of overhang you can clamp the table to the top from the bottom using the te trck slots we made earlier I'm also demoing that concept with this Bora centipede table this is the table people message me about all the time if you're tight on space and cash this is the best they're strong they come in different sizes they fold up out of the way and if you go this route I suggest routing these D deeper into the table so you have more leverage I'm using the 20 mm version of the Bora tops and to my surprise I got a perfect fit using these TSO power lock dogs the fourth option is if you have a bench vice you can attach a 2x4 on the bottom of the table and use your bench vice to secure the table in place if you don't have the space or the budget for a dedicated router table you're going to love how this system we've created for you will fit in your shop and you don't need to compromise on functionality you don't need to break the bank to have movable faces the ability to add safety accessories like featherboards and stock guides and even if you want a miter slot for more advanced tasks you can totally add that in it's up to you the integrated T trck opens up so many possibilities such as stop blocks and a lot of people think that this is the best stop block on the internet and I'm here to say that it's not neither is this one or that there it is YouTubers am I right to you this may just be a pin but there's no way we're going to let you lose our beloved Jimmy pin so we came up with a way for you to snap it in on the back using these brackets so satisfying Jimmy you're safe now I'm not a fan of these huge dust ports that are typical so if you buy our kit you'll get a dust Port that is sized to the most common dust extractor hoses out there including fesol Rockler in syntech we couldn't find this size on the market so we designed our own you're welcome and speaking of dust collection this is my favorite part of the system that is going to blow you away we call this Trimac it's never been done before and we're actually filing for a patent now I don't know if we'll get it or not but it doesn't hurt to try to our knowledge no one's done this and it's crazy in four or 5 Seconds you can attach this without any tools you get over an inch and 3/4 of depth and look at this angle right here it's slightly tapered so that your dust extractor hose gets out of the way when you're using it 1 1,000 2 1000 3 1000 4 1,000 5 1,000 in 5 seconds you can remove it and the best part is these screws are captured so they don't fall out and you can't lose them no tools right this is cool you're probably like well Drew what does it even do glad you asked now normally I edit my videos really tight to keep your attention but I'm not going to do that here I'm going to bring the sound of the tool up so you can hear the motor and if you ever used a trim router this is a familiar thing just sawdust everywhere and it's the thing I hate here's a closeup my friends what I'm about to show you is going to blow your mind we saw dust collection for the chm router now I apologize because this is out of focus I'm going to fire the cameraman who is myself I can't do that but I got more shots to show you hang on I fixed the focus here we go listen there it engages so you can hear it working but you can't see anything because it is capturing all of the Dust so just to prove there's still meat here look I just picked it back up look at all that sawdust coming off this is just on a 3/4 in piece of pine we'll put it back on just so you can see yeah we're still cutting let's switch [Music] angles and I'm going heavy cut here listen to the motor work every now and then you can see some dust Escape but it's like 99.9% this is crazy just nuts P has one of these on their big routers which is part of the inspiration but no one's done this on a trim router according to my research now this was a few months ago this is the first time I tested this idea with a prototype that's why the base is red this is the first time look at me looking at it just I inan disbelief I set up another camera angle just so you can see how much I'm taking off of this Walnut and it's just all going in the [Music] hose these before and afters are crazy I can't believe no one's done this yet you need be asking does it work with bushings of course it works with bushings we're not monkeying around we think of everything here now here's the deal if you want one of these Now's the Time to get it for the next 30 days of this video being released we're going to offer a pretty good discount in free shipping Us in case you're wondering there's no Universal whole pattern design here I hate them and no one likes routing over swiss cheese and you were a big help in all of this I asked you what trim router you have and we took the top eight most common responses and we have designed and have begun Manufacturing in the USA by the way dedicated oversized bases tailored to each router this has been in my mind for the last 4 years we've been prototyping for the last year and now it's on YouTube and available for you to get in your shop if you enjoyed this video and you haven't subscribed why not join the 117,000 others who like The Vibes here oh my that's a lot of people and if you want the witworks trim router based 1000 Pro featuring trim vac yes that's the actual name we were looking for the most ridiculous name just to make you laugh and you want the parts plans and a private buildong video so you can make exactly what you watched me make they're available on my website linked below don't forget your mother was a hamster and Jason Bent smelt of elderberries if you caught the Easter eggs throughout the video let me know
