Why Buy a Router Lift

Sometimes, it seems like there's no shortage of stuff you can spend money on for your shop. Router table here is no exception. I get asked all the time about router lifts in a table. Why would I want one? What does it bring to the table for me? How is it going to make my woodworking life better? First, let's have a look at a more conventional system. If you don't have a lift, what you're probably doing. So I've got a set up here where my handheld router has been fixed to the router table plate. So this is the base from the router. Screws from the plate go into the base. If I were using this handheld, the handles would still be on here. So this is the setup exactly as I would use it as handheld simply suspended from the bottom of the router table insert. Now, when I use this in the router table what'll happen is I'll slide the motor out, put the bits into the router motor, then re-engage that motor in the plate, and I'm doing all of this with this plate hanging upside down in the table, doing this from below. Once it's in the base, then I can use the height control mechanism that's built into the router, in order to change bit height. So in this case, by pushing this button in, I'll be able to make gross adjustments, move the motor up and down, by turning the black knob here at the bottom. I can make fine adjustments where the motor, again with this hanging in the table, is gonna move up and down in small increments to control the height. Finally, I'm gonna lock that in place. Now, let's contrast that with what the router lift does. I've got a router lift hanging in this table. I do everything from above. So, I can engage my crank into this mechanism. As I turn the crank, I'm raising the bit, or I'm lowering the bit. Now I can actually raise this to a point where the collet for the router comes up above the table, and I can do my bit changes from above. When I set bit height, I have very, very fine control. In most cases, with a router lift, every time you turn the crank one full revolution, you're changing the height of the cutter by just a sixteenth of an inch. So imagine what's happening here. When I turn this a quarter turn, that's only a sixty-fourth, an eighth of a turn. There's a hundred and twenty eighth. It gives very, very, very fine control. The bit that's in here right now is a great example of when you want that kind of fine control. This is a lock miter bit, and it's just tiny, tiny parts of an inch or the difference between a good fit and a bad fit, On most router lifts, in addition to being able to just control eighth turn, quarter turn, you can also pay attention to the graduations on the dial, and those graduations are telling me in very, very, very small amounts, the change I'm affecting on the router bit height. Now the other thing that's really cool is that I dial my height in, I don't have to reach under the table and lock anything. The mechanism itself is tight enough that once I've set the height of the cutter, I can take the crank out, and I'm ready to go. So, as you're working with test cuts, and you're dialing in those small increments, it's very, very, very easy to be precise. Now, what this is going to do is add a couple hundred dollars to the cost of my router table, depending on what kind of router motor you're going to hang in the lift and how much money you want to spend on this. You can spend more, a couple hundred dollars gets you a lift that's adequate for a two, two and a quarter horse machine. If you go to a bigger router, like this big three horse 15 amp router, you have to go to a bigger lift. That's gonna cost you more money. So it does add quite a bit to the cost of your table, but I think it's really worth the investment because it really buys you a lot of ease of use and precision. Now let's revisit the router again, cause there is something else I wanna talk about. On some routers, as is the case with this one, if you look at the screw thread that's on here, what I could do with this machine is drill a hole through the insert. Using this T handle wrench then, I can access the top end of this threaded rod. So what I could do is open the lock by reaching under the table. I can reach in then through the hole in the insert. By turning this T wrench, I can affect that threaded rod. That's going to let me dial this up and down. So there are some routers on the market that have mechanisms similar to this where they give you some of the attributes of a router lift. I will say a router lift is easier to use than these built-in mechanisms. Again, as a general rule, I get a finer adjustment from a router lift than I will from the mechanism that's built in. And in most cases with the router, you're gonna have to reach under the table when you're done and lock that in place. So if you're shopping, and you don't want to throw all the money at a lift, look for a router that does have a height control mechanism from above built into the machine. That buys you a little bit of ease of use, but boy, you just can't beat the convenience that you get and precision from having a router lift in your table.