Cricket news and more boring project comments

Any UK readers who are cricket followers might be interested to know it has been reported in the Australian media that the Federal Police have launched an investigation into the English Cricket Team.  Not for a breach of the COVID regulations; but rather following an allegation that a group of Englishmen are masquerading as professional cricketers!  I don’t follow cricket so can’t comment on the veracity of the article.

Now for the boring part.

Jan has been able to sell both my Triton saw bench and router table, along with all the attachments.  This has raised sufficient funds to purchase a router lift.  I didn’t want anything hugely expensive but it must be able to take my old router which is a Casals VCE2000.  Eventually the choice came down to a Sherwood lift from Timbcon or a Carbatec lift from Carbatec.  Looking at the photos of both I could see they were the same .  The only difference being one was branded Sherwood in orange and the other branded Carbatec in blue.  There was a $200 price difference so I opted for the cheaper Carbatec version.

Fitting the router lift is the final part of the work bench project.

There was a slight concern when I arrived at Carbatec and asked to purchase the router lift only to be told they had none in stock.  Their website said different and after some prompting the sales assistant went and checked. “Oh yes, there is one in stock which must have arrived this morning”!

I used the saw fence to parallel up the lift drawing its outline on the MDF top before making a cut out template.

The distance between the outer edge of the router baseplate and the cutting edge of the bit was 79mm and I therefore made the template 79mm larger than the lift dimensions.  The router lift has rounded corners and I hunted around to find a bit with that I could use to cut the rounded corners.  Fortunately I found a Forstner bit.  I used the drill to cut out the corners.

Then it was a case of using the router to cut a 6mm deep rebate in the MDP top before doing a test alignment.

Next I added a 12mm timber beading around the inside of the template and used the router to cut through both the MDF and plywood sheets to create an opening for the lift.

A final test fit with the lift before removing the template

All that remains is to fit the Casals router to the underside of the lift.  I’m still waiting for the T-Track and router fence to be delivered.