Table Mounted vs. Portable Routers

Okay, I actually have five routers but only one with a plunge base. It's the one I use both in my table and hand-held for plunge operations. A couple of the others are trim-style routers plus a Bsoch 1617 that lives in my CNC, and an ancient Sears router that hasn't the light of day for many years. Art (mgmine) may be correct that most jobs can be done on the table, but here's one I did the other day using the router hand-held with an edge guide.To do it on the table would require it to be face down and make it difficult to see what I was doing. Why don't I leave one in the table all of the time? Because my folding table has room for the fixed base but not enough room for the router to be attached when the table is folded. And, for the record, I indicated you could get by with one router and said, "My fixed base is permanently mounted in a table and I use the plunge base hand-held. Both worlds, one router." That's true. I didn't say I only owned ONE. Owning only one router? That would be downright silly.

No question about it, most of my posted projects could not have been possible on a router table. But, there are jobs that a router table can do best.
Here are just a few of my plunge routed projects.

As has been pointed out, there are jobs that are easier to do on the router table and some that would be better not. I built a top 30+ years ago and used it mainly for cutting dadoes in drawer parts and drawer lock corner joints. This probably back in the days when 1/4" plywood was 1/4" and you could cut a nice fitting dado with a standard 1/4" bit - most of mine nowadays are cut with a flat-bottom rip blade, moving the fence as needed to get the required width. Rabbets on the edge of cabinet sides are cut using a hand-held with edge guide, dadoes across cabinet sides are cut with two passes of a hand-held and which ever guide I'm using at the time. I made some shallow drawers, wanted to cut a radius on the edges and struggled with a hand-held trim router trying to balance it on the edge - the next one will be cut on the router table as long as the table gives me enough support. Anything large, I'll clamp a support on the edge and use that, same as I do when I cut the rabbet for the back in a cabinet that I've already assembled - always more than one way to skin a cat.