Wood_Junkie said:
Yeah, I basically got lucky that it went so well. Here's a quick run down with pics...
I wanted to try and use the thumb-nuts that come with the guide plate, but for them to fit I had to remove the plastic part of the router's plunge base (not a problem since it would just be resting on the LR plate anyway, and it comes off with 3 screws). This worked and I was *almost* able to get the router to center and lock down with the thumb screws except for one little piece of base plate where the poles for the Bosch parallel guide goes. Cutting this away allowed me to center the router and use the thumb nuts to hold it down. Here's a piece that I didn't have to cut to give you an idea of what it looks like...
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...and here it is after I cut it...
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- but I wasn't able to use the big t-washer / bushing things that come with the guide plate. Not using those obviously makes the whole thing less stable, as you can see from this pic (which does NOT inspire confidence!):
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I needed it to be more locked-in-place. I probably could have ground away the guides for the parallel rods on my router base and gotten away with just the thumb nuts, but I wanted to keep the router base as pristine as possible. I proceeded to drill some holes in the guide plate directly below the router base's dust-collector screw holes. I wanted these to act more like detents than actual holes - i.e. these holes would simply center the router plate onto the guide plate and keep it from shifting horizontally, while the thumbs screws would do the work of clamping the two plates together. To do this I used a drill bit just slightly smaller than the screw and then forced the screw into the hole a couple of turns - enough so that it was tight but not so much that it would come through the bottom of the plate. The screws do nothing to hold the two plates together; the thumbs-nuts do that, and it's very solid. You can (perhaps) see what I mean with a bottom / top view of the screw holes... The bottom is w. the router attached, in the top view the router's removed...
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Needless to say I had to mark the hole locations with the centering bit in place and the router perfectly centered in the base. I used the screws tightened against the guide plate to scratch it and mark where my final holes would be. There's almost no tolerance for the centering bit, so this is where I got lucky that it worked the first time. I also got lucky with the screws I got being just long enough to stick out the bottom by the right amount when fully tightened onto the dust hood.
Obviously if I want to use the router w. the plunge base I have to do a lot more work to remove it from the guide plate that I would if I had the OF-1400. OTOH, I also have a fixed base for the router, so now when I want to use it w/o the guide plate, I just swap the router body from one base to the other - and that's quick.
I should have taken a better zoomed-out view of the whole thing, but this is the best I have (perhaps I was subconsciously embarrassed by how messy my shop is and didn't want you all to see it!). I've pointed the arrow to the plunge-lock arm which you can see is just kind of dangling because I took the spring out of it. I can still lock the plunge-depth by turning it until it catches (and friction will hold it there), but it's now unlocked by default.
Cheers,
Chris
