Since I built the workshop a little over ten years ago, the kit and machinery in it has been upgraded as and when possible; the ‘possible’ being the variable and depending on the depth of small change available on my CC.

One of the items which I find indispensable is a router table and I initially built an mdf benchtop variety to suit my then pretty ancient Bosch router, which worked reasonably well for a number of years. Its main disadvantage was that it was a bit small and the router had to be inserted each time I wanted to use the table.

Roll on a few years to when I built the next one, which I positioned in the side table of one of the two table saws (long since sold) that I owned. This was bigger and worked quite well but when the table saw went, so did the router table.

It was at that point that I decided to go the ‘whole nine yards’ and buy a full size, top of the range, cast iron top, UJK Technology Professional Router Table complete with all the bells ‘n’ whistles.

Thus far, it’s been a great piece of kit but over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been doing stuff on it (such as setting in box hinges) where I’ve needed to use the fence stop from both sides of the cutter. This was a bit of an inconvenience as it had to be repositioned each time so I decided to get hold of another one, but I found when I fitted it to the table that it wasn’t ‘handed.’
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This was particularly irksome as the job in question at the time was quite small and needed to fit between the two stops, but the locking mechanism on the top prevented this from happening. The first modification was to alter the stop so it locked onto the fence from the right hand side instead of the left.

I don’t know anybody who runs a workshop that doesn’t collect every conceivable spare nut, bolt and washer, but being a bit OCD about these things, I keep all of mine in separate containers. A little bit of rummaging around produced a long, pan head bolt, washer and nyloc nut which was perfect for this application.
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It was the work of a few minutes to dismantle the stop, cut the bolt to the right length and then reassemble.
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The second modification concerns the cutter storage racks which are bolted to the table legs. They’ve been drilled out to accept ¼” and ½” cutters, but when they’re inserted into the holes, they tip over with the obvious result that the carbide edges will knock against each other. As they are, the storage racks are ideal to be used as a template for some inserts; all that needs to be done is to prepare a couple of bits of scrap material which are a snug fit. Mark out the positions of the holes, use a pillar drill to make the holes and then re-position the inserts into the racks. It’s inevitable that all the holes won’t line up exactly, but the smaller ones can be drilled out ‘in situ’ and the larger holes can be enlarged with a Proxxon drill and rotary sanding drum.
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I now keep all my router cutters in both racks without them knocking against one another.