Increase Your Router’s Versatility

A handheld router is far and away one of the most versatile tools you can have in your shop. So many different things we can do with it. We're gonna add to its versatility by adding a Miles Kraft Omnibas to it. Somnibas, all that means this will fit many, many, many, many, many, many different types of routers. It's gonna offer us a bunch of different stuff.

The more you use your router, the more you're gonna find that having the base centered on the collet is very, very valuable. When you look at the base here, the omni base, there's nearly an infinite arrangement of hole placement here then that's what allows us to get this on a bunch of different models and move it around until it's centered. It comes with a. Centering device. So again what we're after is not simply centering the plastic base on the router base.

We wanna make sure this is centered on the collet of the router that's where the system is all gonna come together to allow you to do that. Now one of the spots that that really pays off is if you're gonna use a guide bushing. That goes into the base and again we're gonna rely on this being concentric to the collet of the router so the Omni base does accept the standard size what many people call porter cable style guide bushings. So let me get this one installed and then we'll have a look at an application where we can take advantage of the fact that we've got that guide bushing in there. I've got the guide bushing in the router base.

I've got an adjustable shelf hole jig clamped on my work. So one of the things we know is that the base is now centered on the collet, meaning the guide bushing is centered on the collet, which means that now when I use this jig and I make adjustable shelf holes, I'm gonna be putting those shell holes smack in the middle of the holes in the jig. Just like that. Here's a cool way to take advantage of this base. Put these centering pins in.

And oddly enough they're gonna allow you to center. The way this will get used is in order to put a mortis in this piece. We'll take advantage of those and it's cool because it doesn't matter what the thickness of this material is we just take those centering pins. Turn the router. And again we're back to the concept that the base is centered on the collet.

Now those pins are centered on the collet so when I do this, it automatically centers the bit on my material. And that allows you to cut a mortis perfectly centered on the thickness of the stock. Another benefit we get out of the Omni base is it's compatibility with other Miles craft stuff. So here's an offset base gives you a lot of stability when you're using the router that Omnibase will drop and lock. So now we've got that benefit.

Can also use it with their circle jig. Pivoting from this end that will allow us to cut circles. So a couple more added benefits of throwing an omni base on your router. One application I really like for this omni base is adding it to the base of a trim router. Trim routers come with just incredibly small bases, and that has the opportunity to make them a little bit awkward to handle.

So in addition to that Omni base we can center it here just like I talked about here and. It gives you a significantly larger platform so you have better control over that trim router. Overall, again, routers are crazy versatile, add to it an omni base and you have really jumped that versatility to another level.