Friday, September 9, 2011 Skil 3100-11 X-Bench Router Kit Insert Plate Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The GOOD:
Works well for making edge molding.
Seems to work with any Skill router with the 3 hole base plate.
Very easy to setup the router in the plate.
Comes with a OK fence and not real useful miter gauge.
All the guards, finger board and safety shield attach to the fence.
The fence has an adjustable OK dust collection port.

The BAD:
Its a kludge (a collection of ill considered parts forming a distressing whole).
The plate its self is fine, but it can't be removed without removing the fence.
The fence is fastened with a machine screw (plastic knob on the end) through 1.5" long holes in the fence and into one of 4 holes in the table using a wing nut and washer on the other end. This causes the following problems:
a.Difficult to get the fence fastened.
b.Difficult to adjust the fence.
c.With a large bit as used for molding the work piece has to be less than 3" wide.for dadoes or coping rather <4" from the edge of the board.

The plate puts the router orientated towards the short end of the bench making it difficult to edge shelves or tops larger than about 20".
The holes for bench dogs and clamps are small and there aren't that many (particularly compared to a Festool MFT, but that's a little unfair as those cost nearly 2x the Skill for the cheapest), which makes improvised fences difficult.
The supplied miter gauge is nearly useless as there is .2" (5mm) of side slop.I don't know if he gauge is off or if its the track or even both.
The miter track is .51" in size so there are no standard miter gages which can fit it. (3/4" is the standard.)

The Ugly:
Due to the above factors is not well suited to putting edges on shelves.Yes there are ways to improvise but they are clunky.
The plate can't be removed without removing the fence and that is a pain.Captive nuts instead of wing nuts would have made it much easier.
More positioning holes for the fence would be easy to install at the factory but they can't be free handed, they need to be precise with a drill press and getting that part of the top off isn't easy.

REVISION 1
I wound up buying an Incra LS25WFNCSYS 25-inch Range Positioner with Split Router Table Fence Super System as the fence provided was pretty useless.This is putting a $100 saddle on a $5 horse as the fence was $400.But IMHO something like it is necessary to get a really useful router table.I was doing a bunch of dove tails and the supplied fence caused more problems than not.I plan to either get an Incra router table or build one (probable cost about $400).
END REVISION

Overall useful but not that great.Not horrid for the money, but could have much better thought out.Being able to use the router in any direction on the table would have made this much more useful.

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Product Description:
Includes Router Insert Plate for XBench Workstation - 3100-11, Mounting Hardware