Cutting Pocket Holes on a Router Table
Not too long ago, I went down to the tool store on a wishing trip. I saw a pocket cutter, which I really don’t need for the five or six screw pockets that I cut in a year. But something pushed my Rube Goldberg button, and I rushed back to the shop to build a complicated pocket-cutting contraption that used an old router suspended from a shaft like a pendulum. Well, after I cut pockets in all my scrap lumber, I began to wonder “Now what do I do with the machine put it on a shelf to collect dust?”
About this time, the Goldberg fever left me, and I remembered something my dad told me: “Maybe you don’t need another machine. Just figure out how to do the job with something you already have.” So after some thought, I came up with a markedly simpler method using a ramp and my router table. I simply position the work and the bit depth where I want the pocket to start. Then, keeping my hands well back from where the bit is, I plunge the piece onto the table and push it up the ramp until the bit quits cutting.
Vernon Todd, Springfield, Mo.
Fine Woodworking Magazine, April 1994 No. 105
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