Norm Abrams Style Router Table

A few years ago, I started construction on a router table for my shop, modeled after the one built by Norm Abrams on the TV series New Yankee Workshop. The plans are available for purchase, but I wanted to see what I could come up with on my own.
The design calls for the whole thing to be connected to dust collection, which is a big plus. Anyone who's ever spent much time with a router can tell you that they make A LOT of dust. Seriously.
 I finished building the cabinet three years ago, figuring that when I got time, I'd complete the face frames, drawers, handles, and main compartment door.

 So this is how I've been using it ever since- and even without a main door, dust collection still works fairly well.

 

 sizing up the drawers

 

Cutting the slot for the drawer bottom on one of the drawer pieces. Got a little chewed up...

 

...and here's why. The opening for the router bit on the table makes it unsafe for cutting small pieces. They have a tendency to fall into the gap- super dangerous to anyone who likes having all their fingers.

   

The solution was to take the pieces over to the table saw and make a series of saw kerf cuts just deep and wide enough to accept the drawer bottom.

 

Here's the not yet finished product- stack of drawers ready for test fitting.

 

Obviously I only did the top six drawers here- as seen in their new homes here. I didn't want to build the other drawers until I had the face frame on- (the face frame is what covers up the plywood cabinet carcass- look at your cabinets in your kitchen and you'll know what I mean: it's the "pretty" face of wood you see that's not a drawer.)

 

Walnut boards waiting to become face frames. Quivering with excitement. I wanted dark walnut as the backdrop to create a little contrast with the lighter maple drawer fronts I was planning on installing.

 

 Here, I'm using a specialty tool for joining cabinet face frame members, called a Kreg Jig- it drills a diagonal hole in the end of one piece, than you use a special screw to attach it to the joining member. I bought this jig 2 years ago just for this purpose... and immediately screwed it up. So I ditched the idea and went right to nailing the face frames on through the face of the pieces...

...and here's the end result of face frames going on. Even without finish, it really cleans up the look of the cabinet.

 

Next was to mill some walnut for the main compartment door closure. I wanted to do a mortise and tenon style connection- these are the tenons (although I think REAL cabinet builders have an exact name for this style of joint.) In the next picture, these are the pieces holding in the Plexiglas window right in the center of the cabinet.

 

So I missed a few photos of making the drawer fronts and fitting them to the drawers. Oops. Sounds easy, but slightly more complicated in reality. Here they are halfway installed. Did the easy ones first, since they were all the same size.

 

 

Closeup, right before I called it a night. I love the way the soft maple has this great grain coloration. Most furniture builders would bypass it because of uniformity issues- but I take the other approach and try to make it a highlight.

 

 

I really didn't want to use some boring store bought handles for the larger drawers, so I used some of the leftovers from the drawer front stock. I wanted to keep with the characteristics of the wavy grain, so I went over to the band saw to rough out these handles...

 

 

 ...and then over to the spindle sander to round out the curves.

Made my own maple spacers...

Centered the handles, drilled some holes...

 

...and voila!

 

 

I love how organic the shape is- it just feels good to grab a handle that's out of the ordinary! One of my favorite parts is the character in this top left drawer front.

 

 This is as much of an action shot as you can get with a cabinet!

All it needs now is a few coats of finish- but maybe in another three years I'll get back around to it.

And, if you haven't figured it out from my explanation yet- there's a router mounted upside down in the center portion of the cabinet (with the Plexiglas window) You can see the little cream colored  router bit sticking up through the hole in the top.

2 main advantages of this setup- the dust collection/downdraft action keeps the worktop clean (not to mention the shop, and my lungs!) and it's much safer and consistent for running long material through when you need to put an edge on a board.

 

 

Case in point. I was asked to profile the edge of this oak board for a chair rail over at Rockin' Dave's Bagels here in Bend. (If you're in the area, I highly recommend checking it out! BTW, happy birthday Dave!!)

To cut the profile with a router would have been fairly precarious- trying to balance a wide router on a narrow and long board like this isn't the best way to go. So I just chucked the cove bit in the router table, hooked up dust collection, and fired it up. Easy Cheesy! A little sanding, and it was done.

 

Fire Department Sand Table, Part 3, Metalwork and Finishing Touches

Okey doke. The last post in part 2 I did trim work, filled nail holes, burnt the banana bread, broke my tent canopy, and prepped for the home stretch toward finishing the sand table for the fire department.

Here's the wrap up of the project, with some metal work, finishing touches, and killer accents.

Captain Willis, from Sunriver Fire Department, setting up to weld the carying handles in his new shop, just down the road from mine.

Not a bad pic for looking the other way while I took it!

Meeeeanwhile, I was playing with the cutting torch, working on the other set of brackets for the handle on the opposite side.

I heated the brackets with the cutting torch until glowing red hot on the outer edge.

Once the metal was hot enough to melt through the floorboards...

...I smashed it up with a ball peen hammer to give it a hand forged look. Then I'd move on the the next edge and do the same.

Once Cpt Willis had them all welded up, I took the angle grinder to them to clean up the welds before priming and painting.

Meanwhile, back at the bat cave, this is what two weeks of long days will do to your workbenches if you don't make time to clean up after yourself. What a pigsty!

Late last night, on a buddy's suggestion, I decided to embed a couple of the department's challenge coins in the back end of the sand table. When I had an issue with epoxy setting too fast on the second one, I had to quickly drill it and hammer it out. My buddy Nick saved the day when he mixed up some magic caustic chemicals and dissolved the setting epoxy off the coin. He probably now has cancer, but at tleast he got the epoxy off!

Because of the hasty coin removal, the setting for the coin was slightly hacked up. I thought of heading to the hardware store to find a brass ring or something, but then came up with the idea of using some of the same walnut to match the accent trim to make my own.

To make these trim rings, my roommate Logan came up w the idea of using the drill press. I first used a forstner bid to hog out the middle, then keeping the stock in the same position, changed out the forstner bit for a hole drill to cut the outside of the ring. I then pried out the wood from the hole bit, hand sanded it to round it over, and glued them in place.

30 minutes later, I removed the weights that were holding them down, and threw on a couple coats of spray finish. Still wet in these pictures. (The camera makes it look like they're lop sided, but it's just an illusion. They came out perfect!)

Finished product, just delivered this morning! I have the trap door pulled out here for the photo. This is made this way so it can be joined with other training tables to incorporate an unrban environment or something similar, while still allowing the option of closing it for transport.

The "sand" is actually ground pummice. It's much lighter, a little cleaner, easier to shape, and looks pretty cool to boot.

I really dig the way the handles turned out. Cpt Willis had a hard time welding the thin handle bar stock to the heavy steel brackets without overheating them, while trying to get good penetration. Next time, I'll use heavier guage steel for the handles.

Found these finial end caps that worked out great!

The contrasting walnut trim really makes it "pop!"

Love the look of dovetails!

Schweet.

Fire Department Sand Table, PART Deu

So in PART 1, I milled up the cedar for the main body of the big ol' topless box, routed out dovetails, did some sanding, and glued the pig up. Here's what happened after:

PART 2-

I've had these reclaimed maple door casings for years, waiting for a worthy project to use them on. They're from an old school in Oregon that was torn down- not sure which one, but they were all labeled in cursive from where they were installed- this one was from the journalism room.

 

 

I made a cut and realized not all the nails were removed from the old maple- one of the big drawbacks of using reclaimed material. Dinged up my saw blade, but I have had a replacement for just such an occasion for a while.

 

 

The new blade. My old Diablo blade came with the saw, and was pretty much brand new then. It's been awesome for all kinds of cuts on different materials, so I was eager to install the new Forrest Woodworker 2 and compare.

My Grizzly table saw doesn't have a blade lock (that I know of) for changing out blades. I use a scap cutoff as a lever to keep the blade stationary while I loosen and tighten the nut holding it on.

 

 

New blade came with the teeth dippin in a plastic to protect the edge (and my sensitive little hands.)

 

 

I'm due to upgrade my shop made zero clearance insert. Small cuttoffs could fall in the void created by my dado blade, leaving my hand in the spinning sharp teeth. I don't want the nickname "Stumpy" just yet.

In storage, they haven't had an easy life. A little wobbly and crooked, the first stage was to flatten an edge. Because of the narrow profile, I decided it was best done with my taper jig on the table saw instead of the jointer. Not sure this was the best idea- the ends were a bit tricky.

 

There were some larger pieces of stock that needed resawn also. Cutting these made me really realize exactly how bad I need to make some more functional featherboards. (A featherboard holds the wood tight to the table saw fence, making it way safer, even pressure, and keeps your fingers out of the way.)

 

 

sanding off the sawmarks top, bottom, and edges.

 

 

Here it is installed, with 45-degree mitered corners.

 

 

Next was to install the top maple trim.

 

 

While I was doing detail work, I kept getting destracted by this knot. It wasn't entirely stable. To remedy this, I started by using the fine tip of an Exacto knife to cut away the loose layers surrounding the knot.

 

I then squeezed in super glue, then pressed it down into the cracks and spread it evenly with a scraper. Once cured, I sanded off the excess.

 

 

Making up a little matching wood putty to fill nail holes. To get the color to match closely, I used sanding dust from the palm sander container, mixed it with glue until the consistency of gooey cookie dough, then...

 

 

 

...spead it in nail holes from the reclaimed maple trim.

 





Top trim installed and nail holes filled and dried. I'm taking a card scraper here to hog off the excess filler prior to sanding it out.

 

 

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It was about this time my roomate came out to the shop to let me know he had just got home and "Uh... I turned the oven off..." Oh crap! I had left the house to just go tinker in the shop for a minute  while my banana bread finished cooking in the house. There were six minutes left on the timer when I walked to the shop.

 

 

That was 2 hours ago.

_______________________________________________________________

 

 This is what banana bread looks like after 3 hours at 350 degrees:

 

 

 Pretty decent burn ring around the edge. I had to take it outside and leave it on the bbq to cool off. The carbon smell eminating from these two loaves lingered in the house for days. Even with several heavy duty treatments of Febreeze and 24/7 open windows and doors.

 

 

To make matters worse, while I was trying to burn the house down with my blunders in baking, I found that a gust of wind had tipped my shade tent over, knocked several lawn chairs off the deck and a planter, and snapped a couple of the tent legs off at a critical, non repairable point.

Not awesome.

 

 

 Back in the shop, I worked on the fit of the walnut trim, adjusting the seams to make them match up as finely as possible. Here, I'm using my trusty cardscraper again to clean up the joints. The walnut adds a nice shadow line as well a contrast between the lighter maple and cedar combo.

 

 

After scraping, here I'm using a sanding block to knock down all the rough edges on the interior of the table. (on it's side)

 

 

Next post: PART 3, metalwork and welding, then finished product!

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