Without muh Sleeve…

I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of my router lift. Very exciting. The desk I am converting into a woodworking table looks viable, and I can’t wait to install a router.

I’ve been reading Bill Hylton’s router books. This man is not a fan of gadgetry. For example, I thought I needed a miter track in my table, but he says only a FOOL would have a router track. Actually, he uses the phrase “completely unnecessary.” He even thinks lifts are silly. I think. It sure looks that way.

I don’t care. I want convenience. I don’t want to pull the fricking router out from under the table over and over, and I don’t want to suffer with under-the-table adjustments. Maybe it will turn out that I’m stupid and wrong. I’ll get over it. I always have.

I thought I needed a fancy aluminum fence, but I was utterly lost and consumed with ignorance. Hylton uses crappy bits of MDF and scrap wood. So there’s a big expenditure I won’t be making. But I’ll have to be all manly and craft a dust thing to put on my scrap fences. I also need something to catch dust that falls through the hole in the table.

For the three times a year when I actually use this thing.

I seriously think I should hook up a blower and make a hole in the garage wall, so the sawdust goes out in the grass. It’s MULCH! It IS! Really! Sort of.

You could eject three hundred pounds of dust out there, and two days later, you would see no evidence. But while it’s easy to suck dust, and it’s easy to blow dust, it’s not easy to make a thing that sucks it while also blowing it.

I have a template for the router lift. Naturally, that turned out to be a total waste of money. Hylton says he-men make their own templates by routing around a lift plate’s edge.

Once the rabbet for the lift is cut, I’ll have to get rid of all the material inside it. How on earth do I do that? I never thought about it. Some people use a jigsaw. Which I do not have. Real men drop a circular saw straight onto the table. I assumed I would do it with the router. That may take a while, with an inch of MDF to cut.

I need to build a few things, in order to develop some competence. I’m wondering if I have what it takes to make a humidor. I don’t really need one, but I have never been happy with the one I bought for my dad. Maybe I could make a better one.

Shut up. It could happen.

Come on, UPS. I’m bored.