Brian Henderson wrote:
I went out to my shop this morning to find that a couple of 2x8s that
had been leaning up against the wall for weeks now had somehow fallen
over and in the process, landed on my router table. Luckily, I didn't
have the router in it, but the top and one side were completely
destroyed. It's really not worth fixing and I had been thinking of
building another one anyhow, so...

I've spent the day looking through a lot of pictures and plans for
router tables and while I've found a lot of elements that I've liked,
I wanted to see what elements everyone else thought were either
essential or just handy, when building the "perfect" table. If you
could have anything at all, what would you want in yours?

I have a table attached to my saw (what some have described as an
'aircraft carrier').

Depending on what you do, the very large table surface makes edging
tables and other large items easier. Plus you get double duty from your
TS fence

Mine has a router lift as well, which lets you raise and lower the
router from the top surface and make very accurate depth adjustments,
but it also becomes tedious to raise and lower it with the crank all the
time.

I made a custom control out of relays that gives me a footswitch that
controls either the saw, or the router, and automatically turns on the
vacuum when the switch is in the 'router' position. I find I use the
footswitch 90% of the time on both the saw and the router. Get a used
115v COVERED FS for safety.

Also has a keylock to prevent curious kids from starting the saw/router
unintentionally.

Very handy.