Best Wood Router: Buying Guide for Beginners

Last Updated on March 15, 2024 by John Patterson

In the carpentry business, a wood router is an essential tool in your toolkit. Both beginners and professionals need this tool to spin cutting bits. Remember, power tool workshops are incomplete without these tools.

The Best Wood Router may prove helpful in different complicated and easy woodworking jobs. These are useful for producing attractive art pieces. Routers help you to cut grooves by offering a solid base. It allows you to modify the bit upward and downward.

It helps you to install bits of numerous shapes and sizes. A router proves helpful to groove joints, tenons, mortises, and tongue cutting. See the types of wood routers available in the market.

Types of Wood Routers

#1. Small Routers

Small routers are famous as laminate or trim routers. The small routers offer cutting-edge performance for banding plywood flush pieces in creating cabinets. These routers have special motors between the 1 and 1.25 HP range.

#2. Large Routers

These routers have 1.75 – 3.25 HP motors. With these powerful machines, it is easy to remove additional material. You can use it with router tables.

#3. Plunge Router

It is a particular plunge-type machine to hold the center of wood and plunges into it. With a plunge router, the procedure will be faster and easy with little waste.

#4. Stationary Router

These can be adjusted in a location, but stop it at your convenience.

#5. CNC Routers

Computer numeric control routers are advanced routers. Nowadays, these are famous among users for different benefits.

Essential Features of a Router

Some additional functions will make your woodworking tasks easy. See these important features before purchasing a router:

Microfine Deepness Cut

Workers can make a deep cut for comfort, adaptability, and high precision with this function.

Router Table

Make sure to mount your router on one table for consistency, comfort, and control. It is easy to design and put router tables at your convenience.

Dirt Collection

You can keep your shop tidy and clean with dirt collection features. With this feature, a router can collect dirt and dust and control an area tidy.

Variable Speed

It is an essential feature because variable speed enables you to modify the rate based on the nature of a bit available with your router.

Soft Start

Make sure to buy a router with an electric motor and soft start that delicately accelerates to a predetermined speed. A router without a soft start may face a sudden increase in power and snag the router from your hands. It can increase security and safety danger.

Spindle Lock

For several people, this feature is essential because several routers need two wrenches to make some adjustments. A spindle lock makes it easy to hold an electric motor’s shaft in the preferred position. You will need a wrench for this purpose.

Routers are versatile tools, and you must have them in your collection. Feel free to start with a large router because it may do several things smoothly.

Benefits of Wood Routers

Wood routers are beneficial to increase your efficiency. See some highlighted benefits of using these routers.

Avoid Unwanted Waste

With CNC routers, you can avoid accruing large piles of waste. You will not waste any money in the form of wasted wood. The wood routers are specific to decrease the amount of garbage remarkably.

Complete work with Large Cutting Fields

A standard router may not be able to handle a large wooden piece. Moreover, it will be complicated to obtain the perfect finishing. You may not be able to get the desired results. With CNC routers, you can perfectly manage lots of work in large fields.

Flawless Repeated Finish

These routers can help you complete demanding jobs and conclude them effectively and quickly. With these routers, you will get a flawless finish and precision. If you are using computer-recognized models, there is no need to worry about human errors.

Maximum Safety of Workforces

You can’t impact the safety of the workforce because of machinery. With these routers, you can improve the safety of people working with you. These prove ideal for decreasing the hazard of the cutting mechanism involved in several other models of wooden routers.

Easy and Flexible to Use

For a standard router, you will need a trained and experienced workforce. It may increase your expense. Anyone can use CNC routers with primary computer training. As a result, you can decrease the payment of skilled people.

Maximum Productivity

Industrial uses of CNC routers may offer accuracy in work and excellent quality. They are suitable for mass production and churn out unnecessary expenditures. These may occur with human errors and manual labor.

Check Base Style

Wood routers are available with different base styles. Remember, base style is essential, similar to the motor size. With numerous available types, choose the best wood router with a suitable base. Make sure to consider your uses or projects before selecting the base style.

You can choose between a plunge base, fixed base, and D-Handle Base. Remember, the fixed base is a standard base with fixed knobs and handles on different sides. These bases may be mounted to router tables. Feel free to use them for edge routing purposes.

The plunge base is versatile because you can use it for everything with a fixed base. These bases work well for fluting, mortising operations, dado cuts, and blind grooves. This base can move the motor upward and downward on spring-loaded columns of a machine.

You can get multiple depth stop settings with a plunge base. Feel free to fine-tune micro-adjustments to particular specifications. Moreover, the D-Handle base is available with a standard base instead of double knobs.

A D-shaped handle and a knob offer unique pistol-grip control. It provides a locking trigger on/off the power switch for smooth operations. If you want to use multiple bases, feel free to buy a kit with a combination of different bases.

Different types of routers are available in the market. Feel free to choose the best router as per your needs.