The reason I didn’t think I could use the old one was because I had previously used the extra area on the right side of my Table saw to house the Router table. This worked well in my previous shop since each piece of equipment (out of necessity) could be repositioned on mobile bases; rearranging to use the router table was trivial.

With my new set up, however, I have the equipment grouped in, more or less, fixed positions and, as you can see in the next photo, the right side of the Table saw is blocked by my Jointer.

Table Saw and Jointer grouping. The Router table top had been located between the two arms coming off the right side of the Table Saw.

Needing to do some routing for an upcoming project, I decided to try to re-use the top because I didn’t want to spend the time to build the new ‘ultimate’ Router table – yet, anyway.

After pulling out the old top, I realized that if I found a way to clamp it to the back of my workbench to give it strength and stability, then all I’d need to do was add some simple legs to keep the outer edge upright.  After setting this up, I then realized that the old baffles I used to contain the wood chips for the Dust Collector ducting, could still be hung from the table.   And Voila!  Here you have it!

"New" Router Table. The back edge of top is bolted to a cleat that is then clamped to the Workbench. The old baffles hang down as they did before.

"New" Router table side view. The main difference is that the dust hood is no longer suspended from the baffles (I couldn't find the old hood) but, rather, uses my larger hood with a rather ungainly looking support arm (which is also clamped to the Workbench).

Finally, the most excellent part is that I’ve replaced my older 1 1/2 HP router motor with a new 3 1/4 HP motor.  WOW! THAT makes a difference!

So, now I have a “new” Router table that can be set up fairly quickly and provides a good, stable platform for routing.  I’ll replace this with a permanent setup at some point in the future, but, for now, this will work fine.