Cool Things to Make With a Wood Router

A wood router is a tool used to hollow an area of hard materials and create perfect patterns. While it is also used for cutting fine, fancy edges, a wood router can be used for various other things and can be very exciting to work with.

The first wood routers were hand-powered tools. However, as the electric current became the basis for every home, more and more electric wood routers appeared on the market, slowly replacing the hand-powered ones over time.

Electric wood routers consist of a flat plane with a rotating shaft, which spins very fast, powered by an electronic motor.

Today, there are various wood router styles and models, produced for different woodworking. Most of them have adjustable speed control and soft-start feature, which allows the router to start working slowly and gradually increase the speed.

There are many things that can be made using a wood router. Today, we have reviewed some of the most useful ones. You will have a good time while creating, and the items you make will also be useful in your home.

Using a Wood Router for Making Drawers

Drawers are very useful things for every home. Since the beginning of the first woodworking a few millennia ago, people have been making different kinds of boxes and drawers.

However, back then, they were making drawers out of one chunk of wood. In that period, they didn’t have wood routers in any work, and it was unimaginable to create drawers as we know them today.

If you decide to make a drawer, the first thing you should do is to make the grain direction go from side to side. It will press the sides out, making it stick in the opening. Also, pay a lot of attention to making drawers precisely the same size as the opening on a drawer. 

If you find it challenging to make the perfect fit, you should use a hand plane or a belt sander to adjust the outside surfaces.

You should also think about shaping the edges, for the most beautiful drawer design. Almost everything made of wood in our homes has at least a little bit of shaped edges. Shaped edges can really emphasize and enhance the design.

With the wood router, you can achieve the perfect edges, without the need for some special skills or lots of practice. Make sure to work with the router in a counterclockwise direction, so the bit will push the router toward you, making it easier to work.

However, if you are doing some edge cutting in the inside of an object, like an image frame, for example, you should do the routing in a clockwise direction. 

Make a Cutting Board

This is a handy yet straightforward item to make. You can use various hardwoods to make a cutting board so that every board will look different.

Since making cutting boards is a straightforward process, it will be a good practice if you are a beginner, which will give you a solid basis for more complex, future projects.

Making a Step Stool

Another beneficial and just a little bit more complex thing to make is a step stool. It can be a beautiful item for your home, as a decoration, but it can also be very comfortable to sit in the armchair and raise legs on a step stool, after a hard day at work.

You can also make a step stool be a bit higher, so you can put it near a couch, and put a few books or a coffee on it to be at hand while watching a TV.

However, if you have plenty of wood items in the room, you might think about making a stool from the similar wood and similar color as the rest of the items, so that it will fit nicely.

Building a Custom Wine Rack

A great thing to make with a wood router is a custom wine rack. It will be a great decoration element for your home bar, but it will also be extremely useful.

Many people struggle with the fact that they don’t have enough room to put away all the wine bottles, or just don’t want their children to be able to reach them. In that case, building a custom wine rack is a great, yet fascinating and not too complex solution.

A Shoe Organizer 

Many families, especially with kids, struggle with the problem of having too many shoes, and no place to put them all away.

A shoe organizer can be a great solution, and yet an interesting and decorative wooden element. Also, it’s better to make it on your own and sharpen your wood routing skills, instead of buying a shoe organizer.

By making it on your own, you can be sure that it will perfectly fit your interior design. You can also divide the organizer into a few smaller parts of the same or similar size so that you can have an organizer for each family member.

Season’s Greetings Spice Rack

It can consist of three disks, each one with a few hollows to put your spice bottles in them. At first, use a pencil and a protractor to divide a wooden disc into 12 wedges of 30 degrees. Then, center the smaller disk on top of the larger one, and use a drill press to drill holes in the 12 lines.

After that, divide the smaller disc into 60-degree wedges for six more holes. Once you finish the work, you will have a beautiful spice rack that can hold up to 18 bottles of various spices.

Behind the Door Shelves

The space between the door can be an excellent storage space but is very often overlooked. For example, it would be great to build and mount door shelves behind a laundry room door. While being very useful, it won’t take any space from your laundry room, since the area behind a door is a space that you probably didn’t even use before.

Also, the needed materials are pretty inexpensive. Just measure the distance between the wall and the hinge of the door, and subtract around 2-3 centimeters, which would be the maximum shelf depth.

Also, you should make sure to put the rubber bumper to protect the door. It might need some time to get used to having a behind-the-door shelf, so you might accidentally hit the shelf while opening a door, causing damage to both the shelf and a door.

In Conclusion

These were just a few of the more interesting, yet useful things to build with a wood router. If you are inexperienced with a router, you should first start with a cutting board. It requires the minimum materials and is very simple to make, consisting of only one piece of wood.

As you begin to sharpen your skills, you might want to try out different things, and move on to creating something like the shoe organizer or behind-the-door shelf. When making wooden stuff for your home, it is essential to pay attention to the color and the type of wood.

If you choose the right color and type, it will fit your home perfectly and, besides being useful, will also look nice and be a great decorative element.