Hello from South Carolina

Hello everyone, despite my best efforts I still managed to get on the board. I am a retired Civil Servant who will be 60 in another month and my love for woodworking is going through a painful learning curve. While I have purchased many tools through the years and built my pieces of furniture for my family and friends, my experience with a router was hands on only and no real understanding of how to use a router bench or cabinet. Then one day while I was visiting relatives in California I found Router Workshop; it is not available on South Carolina Public television. During the eight days that I was watching this show I became addicted to discovering jigs and fixtures and methods for assembling furniture in ways that I never knew. I have found a way to watch the show now...on Nebraska Public television and am committed to building a router cabinet. Most of the difficulties have been overcome, however I have some questions and would truely appreciate some advise and information from this group. Bob discussed the advantages of the double wrench method for securing the router bit, how do you make a single wrench router into a double wrench router? I have a router lock which is a pain to use in the router bench that I just put together, when I want to change bits. My second question is do I need a table top greater than 3/4 inch to provide the proper stability for a 3 1/2 h.p. router? Would gluing formica on the top and bottom accomplish this task? Finally, when installing the router plate, is there anything that I should know before I do this twice? I look foreward to your threads and have provided my e-mail address should anyone want to talk in greater detail. Erich Benner [email protected]