The world of routers is a mysterious, cult filled world. Its incredible what
you can do with the beasts. A bare router out of the box with a common
straight bit doesn't do much. You need guides and templates and fancy bits
to really milk the value out of these things. A router table or at least a
static mounting board opens up another world. My first router "table" was a
piece of plywood drilled to fit my router and clamped between two saw
horses. I used it to make zero tolerance throat plates for my table saw.

To the point of your quest - get a book on routers. If you can afford it,
get some videos. I love videos because you can see things in motion that
just are not clear in still photographs. Pat Warner is one of the well
known authors on routers. I have a book by Patrick Spielman that is also
good. It does a good job of explaining the very basics of a particular
approach, then gets into specifics with practical cost effective approaches
($700 dovetail jigs are not always needed!).

I open up the book occasionally and just read. Invariably, I get this Eureka
experience "I didn't know you could do that with a router". Its caused me
to run to the shop late at night and just stare at my router to better
understand what the book said.

A fixed base router is great for table use and some hand held use. But for
lots of hand held uses, a plunger is much more flexible. Rather than
spending more money on a plunger, you might first consider setting up a
basic router table.

Bob


"Childfree Scott" wrote in message
om...
I'm renovating a vintage 1950 house, and just bought a router (a trim
router, to be specific). I don't have any bits for it yet. Now here
is my stupid question:

How do I use it? Pictures or a video clip would be nice.

I mean I know what you can do with a router, but it's not obvious from
looking at it exactly how it works. And should I have gotten a plunge
router instead?
The onlt thing I can think of at the moment that I really want to do
with it is rouer out a little bit of wood on my cabinet hinges because
my new cabinet hinges leave an air gap slightly larger than the old
ones did.