brainwagon

So, I earlier this week I was working on making a wooden box as part of my skill building in woodworking. Actually I made two boxes, but that’s a different story. Here is the better of the two, made from some scrap cedar fence posts:

Rabbeted the sides into the front and the back, and then a small dado holds a plywood bottom in the box. I was all set to make a top which I wanted to round over the top when I discovered that something was wrong. The locking lever that was supposed to lock the router height simply wasn’t engaging anymore. Odd! Nothing that I knew. Oh well.

Tonight I disassembled the entire thing to see what was going on.

Here is the parts diagram from the manual:

So, on this diagram, the part 8A is the lever that is normally used to lock the router into position. It’s kind of a clunky mechanism, which perhaps is easiest to see demonstrated in this video:

https://youtu.be/1P5gUoJLDtQ

But oddly, the locking lever suddenly became entirely loose. I disassembled the router to see what the deal was. The lever is held against the bolt (7A) by two split ring washers (9A). The slightly odd thing is that the bolt is not actually long enough to directly push against the vertical guide rails. Apparently there is another part (6A, labeled LOCK PIECE) that.. well…

It appears to be entirely missing. I’m not sure how this little essential bit went missing, but I found no trace of it.

So, tomorrow it will be time to call Harbor Freight and see if I can find the little piece as a replacement. The router is less than a year old, so I would like to return it to working order.

But if you took the time to watch the video, you’ll see that this router table isn’t actually very good. There are tons of ergonomic issues and build issues that make it less than a complete joy to use, and I’m beginning to wonder whether a project in my future should be to take one of the two other routers I have in my shop which I got at estate sales, and build a true and proper router table (perhaps with a lift, and a better fence, and better dust extraction).

Addendum: I called Harbor Freight’s Technical Support line this morning. Because the router is beyond the 90 day warranty period (I’ve had it for something like six months, back when I built the table for it https://brainwagon.org/2019/04/13/a-rolling-stand-for-my-harbor-freight-router-table/) they didn’t have much to offer. “We don’t have any parts available”. Well, that’s… not great. I am thinking that perhaps I could replace the entire locking mechanism with a longer metric bolt and a 3D printed knob. I’ll have to have a closer look at it. The other possibility is to try to locate one on ebay to serve as a parts donor. Or give up on this cheap one entirely. Grump.

Addendum: Okay, I disassembled the thing, stripping it all the way down. I imagined that the failure mode was that the little LOCK PIECE 6A had slipped down inside one of the vertical posts. I had to pull basically every visible screw, and at each point I peered, poked and prodded. But finally, just as I was about to give up, I heard a faint rattle, and… voila! A small cylinder of brass dropped out. Huzzah! I wasn’t up to carefully reassembling it tonight, but I should be able to restore it to working condition this weekend. Did I mention that the mechanism is really dumb? It is. But I don’t need to immediately replace it.