Hafco Woodmaster Sliding Router Table RT-100

Don't waste your money, buy a quality table – This is by far the most frustrating piece of equipment in my workshop. It looks great until you start to use it, then most of the bling stays on the shelf and is never used. The fence system is a waste of time, the fine adjustment is impractical, I had to bridge both fences to get them to remain parallel. The sliding table is never used and too far from the bit to be useful. I spend more time adjusting and re adjusting settings than I do actually using it. Unscrewing the locking screws on each side to raise the top and adjust the depth of cut requires clearing the table, is time consuming and painful. There are far better router tables available than this, spend a few bucks more and enjoy your woodworking.

Overall value for money with a few fixable “buts” – Fixed top needs to be shimmed at fasteners to level with sliding table. Legs need extra rails lower to stabilise for suitable castors. Power control should be mountable for safe access when machining from fixed top side especially good when doing long stock machining. Otherwise a good buy.

There must be a better way – At first glance the table is quite solid . However the manner in which the router is attached is very poor and lacks any consistent positioning. The doco says it fits most routers but I've found it virtually impossible to accurately attach a router to the table. I'm very dissappointed.

Absolute Rubbish – This Router Table is so poorly constructed that it is near impossible to get accurate and square cuts. The sliding table is not flush with the stationary table and it also slides poorly. The clamping system moves out of square when tightened. I cannot recommend strongly enough to buy something else.

Poor quality. High price – Summary This is vastly over-priced for the quality. It has several faults. Some faults can be fixed – for a price – and some I just can’t see a cure for. More detail I got this table from Machinery House (Hare and Forbes). Their service was excellent. This is the same router table that Axminster sell in England and the price is the same at current exchange rates. I paid almost $500 including shipping ($42). I’d advise you to check out the reviews at Axminster as well.

It arrives on a cardboard pallet, in a tightly packed cardboard box. The assembly instructions are just about useless. You need to look at the pictures and hope you’re doing the right thing. At $500 surely they could get an Australian to write out decent instructions in real English with meaningful photos. Once I’d built the table frame, it was extremely stable and I was impressed by that. I wasn’t impressed that two holes which had to line up were over 12mm out. I finally got the rest of it together by looking at the pictures. The exploded view at the back of the instructions can be a help.

The cast iron table is not flat. Now, in my opinion, it’s just about theft to advertise a tool with a cast iron table and then not make sure it’s machined flat. Mine is not too bad – but it’s visibly not flat – but one guy reports getting one that’s 1.5mm out! Can’t fix that.

The fence is very poorly made, but I think I can get around that by adding a wooden fence, amongst other things. The dust collection chute is not really in the right position, although other people put it in the same place. There is no guard on the fence (no guard on a router table!), so I’ll be making one when I do the other modifications that the fence needs for it to be usable.

The mitre gauge needed a bit of filing/re-drilling to get it together - holes in the wrong place again. It also needs a wooden or aluminium extension or replacement.

The sliding table is pretty good and you can adjust the height a bit, if you need to, by taking its guides off and adding or removing washers.

There is another major fault in the design that I can’t yet see a cure for. The router is fixed in place by brackets in slots so there’s no way of getting it back in exactly the same place every time – as you can with a plate which fits into a recess in the top of the table. This means that if you make any accessories (say, for pin routing) there’s no guarantee that they will be in the same place relative to your router if you remove and replace the router. You could buy a spare base for your router and leave it fixed to the table permanently, I suppose. Bit expensive though.

I think I’m going to turn this thing into a useful router table but if I’d realised how bad it was I’d have bought parts and made my own. As it is, I still have an old wooden and plastic one that I made and I won’t be getting rid of it just yet.

Badly made. Cast iron top not flat.