I recently spent some time in the garage workshop on a non-tube project I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. Up to now, my chassis have all been a mitered box with a lip to inset the top and bottom plates. I cut the lip with a straight edge and a hand-held router. This works fine and produces good results, but setting it up for the cuts was a chore. The better solution for this kind of rabbet with a fixed width/depth is a router table, so that’s what I built!
My new table includes a white-board top, inset aluminum plate for the router, and t-track to adjust the fence distance. The fence has adjustable stops so I can get close to zero clearance and add shims to plane edges or remove small amounts of width from boards. This will all make cutting the same chassis I’ve been doing much quicker. It also opens up some new chassis possibilities:
Here’s a different style chassis that I’ll use in the next preamp build. The sides are still wood and include a lip to inset the top and bottom, but the front plate is 1/4″ aluminum and the back is an aluminum c channel. This will make drilling for jacks and controls much easier than using a 3/4″ wood panel. Making the same enclosure with decent precision would have been much more difficult without the new router table.
More updates to come as I begin this preamp project!
wauwatosa tube factory 