Harvey Cast Iron Router Table Build

[Aaron Inami]

I was inspired by Jim Becker last year when he did his cast iron router table. Now that my slider is setup, this will serve as an outfeed table - and also allow the slider to assist in routing large material. I'm not quite ready to make headway into this, but certain things prompted me to start early. This is going to be a long running thread to document a multi-month project.

Harvey website false advertising? - I have been watching these items for a little while and the large Harvey cast iron top has been delayed shipping. It used to say "Estimated shipping March 20", but just a couple weeks ago it changed to "Estimated Shipping April 20". I thought that I had better put forth my order before the delays became longer. So I put my order in. A couple days later I got a shipping notification from Harvey and received both items over the weekend. So, is this actually "false advertising"? It seems like something Harvey is stating to influence people to buy now (like maybe they have a large inventory and need to sell-through before a new overseas shipment comes in) -- and maybe they are expecting consumers to be happy when "all of the sudden" their product ships, lol. I was going to purchase this anyways, so it was not a big concern for me.

Harvey_False_Advertising.jpg

Anyways, the cast iron table came and I opened it to make sure there was nothing wrong. This thing is seriously heavy! lol. The router fence is absolutely excellent. At this point, I am waiting on table legs/frame to move to the next step.

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[Dwayne Watt]

Perhaps an order was cancelled and you were next in line...
I have ordered a couple of machines from Harvey. One had a significant lead time but did arrive a couple weeks early (still 2 or 3 months after I ordered). This was year and a half ago when the ports were still backed up substantially. The second large item was in stock but still took a couple weeks before it actually shipped (trucking was tight at the time as far as I recall). I suspect they have personnel shortages at their warehouse facility as much as anything.

[Jim Becker]

That looks like a really nice casting and yea, it appears to be a great fence design, too. 'Looking forward to you taking this shop project forward once you have the stuff you need. BTW, the April date appears to be for the RT-36-I. Is that the one you got?

[Keith Pitman]

You have shag carpet in your shop?

I bought mine last year. Both the table and fence are a beautiful piece of kit. The cast table is VERY heavy. I installed mine single-handed. Look forward to hearing how you do it.

[Aaron Inami]

I just checked their website. The RT-800 is the cast iron top I got - and it now has an estimated ship date of Apr 30.

The RF-36-I is the Imperial Fence that I got, but it seems they have adjusted the estimated ship date to earlier at March 20th. lol. The screenshot I posted had both items at Apr 20.

Nope, the shag carpet shop is not me. I have a small 20' x 20' garage, so economical usage of space is critical.

[Steve Wurster]

I was eyeing that table top as a potential replacement for my "shop-made laminate-covered double layer of MDF" one that I built many years ago. Unfortunately the spacing of the T-slots won't work for my Woodpecker's Super Fence without modification, and I wasn't (fully) interested in buying a new fence or modifying my existing one.

But if I ever do decide to completely rebuild my router table then I might start to seriously consider that Harvey top. It looks really nice.

[Aaron Inami]

The problem with most of the router table fences on the market is that you have to re-square the fence to the miter slot every time you move the fence or take off and put it back on the table. I could have gone with the Incra LS Super System / Wonder Fence, but those are extremely heavy and I did not want to deal with that much metal and having to custom drill mounting holes and "perfect square" mounting jigs. The Incra fence has a 2-1/2 foot section of metal that hangs off the back of the fence and you need a lot of router table space to handle that. The Incra would be great if you had a permanent router table/fence setup, but I need the ability to quickly do change over between router operations and saw out feed table. The Harvey fence was the only one that will stay perfectly square to the miter slot whenever I remove/add the fence or adjust the fence itself. This was extremely important since I want to use the slider table from my saw as an assist -- similar to a sliding table shaper. It would help keep the router fence square to the sliding table and crosscut fence.

[Joel Gelman]

I liked the Incra and the JoinTech before that. See what I did (picture). Just one option. I never got around to building drawers.

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[Aaron Inami]

The Incra is a great tool, but it's heavy and notice how much room you need behind the fence for that whole mechanism? Your table is excellent, but you had to built an extension table in addition to the cast iron top to mount the Incra, lol. I don't want to use up that much space.

[Joel Gelman]

Yes, but I chose the longer travel. Incra makes several different sizes with the shortest 17 inches, yes?

[Aaron Inami]

Joel, I have already bought the Harvey table and fence, so it's a done deal. But let me ask you this. Would you be able to mount the Incra fence and 17" extension using only the cast iron top you have?

[Michael Burnside]

That looks really nice. Had Harvey had the SawStop finger technology I would have seriously considered going that way. I make a living programming, so one finger means loss of providing for my family so it wasn't worth it to me, but looking at that router fence makes me wonder?

[Joel Gelman]

Aaron,

I am not sure if I could mount a 17 inch without an extension since I never owned the shorter extension. My guess would be a short extension would be needed. For me, the much longer extension and LS allowed me to move the fence back farther towards the back wall without removal, and I used the router table double duty as an outfeed table for an adjacent shaper. I never had to remove the fence to get it out of the way.

Of course the advantages of the 17 inch over the Harvey in my opinion even with a smalll extension would be ability to have the fence farther behind the bit should you not only want to work with bits that keep your bit right near the fence. Also, I think there are other advantages of the Incra. I would expect that one could some up with some threaded insert with knobs plus indexing way to mount that Incra to a short extension for easy removal and replacement if easy removal is the objective. Just showing one option in response to the comment about the Incra.

[Aaron Inami]

I think you are talking about moving the fence back enough so that you can use the fence to help the router bit do a dado type cut in the middle of the material. Looking top-down on my Harvey table/fence, I can get 5" between the center of the router bit and the fence - with the fence still being locked down. If the material is larger than this, I can always use the slider table to hold the clamped down material and move the material over the router bit for a dado type cut.

I'm not bashing your table at all. I think Incra makes excellent tools. I just don't want that big of a router table (behind the fence). My space is a premium and I am already kind of targeting to put a bandsaw behind the router table and I need as much space as I can for that.

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[Aaron Inami]

That looks really nice. Had Harvey had the SawStop finger technology I would have seriously considered going that way. I make a living programming, so one finger means loss of providing for my family so it wasn't worth it to me, but looking at that router fence makes me wonder?

The Harvey website indicate the smaller cast iron router top is 27" deep exactly and can be mounted in most tablesaws that have a 27" deep table, including the following:
- Grizzly G0690, G0691, G0899
- Sawstop PCS
- Shop Fox W1819, W1820, W1824

Though, if you have the 30" Sawstop ICS, you are of out of luck here, lol.