Nothing Severed Yet

Bosch Builds Better BLUECORE Batteries

Bosch has released a new battery system for their line of cordless tools. These new batteries have a lifetime that is 50% longer than traditional batteries and includes chargers that charge in just 30 minutes. The secret to the two packs is a combination of new heat rods inside the batteries and a microchip to let the charger know what's going on inside the pack while charging. Heat is the enemy of any battery pack. As the cells get hotter they litteraly start to cook and burn and can no longer hold a charge. As cordless tools get more and more powerful, this becomes even more of a problem. The heat rods embedded in the battery packs suck the trapped heat from deep inside the battery pack to the outside air keeping the batteries cooler. This keeps the batteries much happier and lets them last much longer.

The microchip inside the battery packs talk to the charger when the pack is inserted. This way the charger can know exactly what the conditions are like inside the battery pack and optimize the charging to get the most life and quikest charge out of the system. At the same time, the charger can let you know how healty your battery packs are so you aren't supprised at the jobsite with a dead battery pack.

Best of all, Bosch has made these new packs compatible with their existing cordless tools. That's right, instead of squeezzing you to buy a whole new set of tools to get these advantages you can just replace your existing packs as they wear out. The new chargers will happily handle your old battery packs as well, so you only need one charger durring the switch over. As an added bonus, the new charger will even charge your old batteries faster, so even the old packs will have you back to work sooner.

I've gotta give Bosch kudos for offering a new system that upgrades both their old and new tools. It's great to see a company that doesn't abandon their existing customers when a new technology comes down the pipe.

I just knew it had to be this easy...

The Good: Adjust the height from above the table with out breaking the bank
The Bad: May need some adjustment to achieve precise height
Overall: A great value for your router
Rating: Four Thumbs Up (4/5)

A router table is a wonderful thing! A router table can also be an expensive thing. It seems that sticking a router under a hole in a table and using it from the top should be a simple bit of engineering, but until recently it eluded most router manufactures. Your two options were to spend a few hundred dollars on a router lift or to bolt your fixed base under the table and go spelunking every time you wanted to adjust the height.

The Bosch 1617 kit that I bought a couple of years ago was no exception, but every time I looked at the fixed base I just knew that it should be a simple modification to find a longer screw for the adjustment and then drill one hole. I just knew that was all it would take...

My wife will happily tell you that I come up with far more projects than I could possible ever get done, so once again I never took the time to follow through on the modification. Luckily someone from Bosch was hiding in the rafters and took my grand idea back to the factory. The result is the ponderously named "Undertable Router Base with Above-Table Wrench Access: Model RA1165" which I'll just call the table base. It's exactly what I wanted and had envisioned and you can pick one up for under $60. Bosch was kind enough to send me one to try out and it works just like the excellent fixed base that came with my router. Flip open the latch, turn the screw for fine adjustment, close the latch. You still have to reach under the table to find the latch, but all your adjustments can be made from the top with the included wrench.

Also, the combination of the open design and the included plastic window makes for great dust and chip collection. If you set up the table right, air is sucked down the hole in the router table and into the dust collector grabbing dust from above and below in the process.

I did have two minor issues with the base:

1) They should have included a template to locate the hole for the adjustment screw. Not a big deal but since there is no removable plate to use as a template you have to be a bit clever in figuring just where to drill the hole.

2) Occasionally the router would tilt just a hair when the latch was released and straighten back up when the latch was closed. This made precise adjustment of the height tough. I was able to fix the issue by tightening the nut on the latch to reduce the slop between the router motor and the base when the latch was opened, but now the latch clamps down on the motor tighter than I'd like. This could be fixed with a bit of grinding on the latch lever, and is somewhere on my list of projects.

Over all I'm very happy with the base. It does everything I need at a good price. If I were running a full time shop routing day in and day out I'd still by a nice router lift, but for something that gets used once a week it's perfect.

Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com

Woodworking for Drooling Lobotomy Patients

Back in 'the day', if you wanted a basic overview of a subject like woodworking, you might find yourself looking for a book titled something like this.

"Introduction to Woodworking"
"Get Started in Woodworking"
"Woodworking for Beginners"

(Note that while all of these books are listed at Amazon, they are all out of print.)

That was before the ingenious discovery by the book industry that people prefered to buy introductory reading material from authors who considered the buyer to be "a person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers." Who would have thought? Taking a lesson, I'm currently raising capitol for a national chain of beauty salons to be called "Gilding the Pig: Beautician Services for Disfigured Cheapskates with No Self-Esteem". But I digress.

Back in the Old Days, before readers were being compared my nephew whose most recent accomplishment was wearing Big Boy Underpants*, a book called "Basic Woodworking" was published by Sunset Books. I picked it up at the used bookstore for a couple of bucks when I needed something to read. It wasn't terribly promising, what with no author listed, and some pictures of hand tools and a router on the cover. But this book is AMAZING.

It devotes 1-5 pages to each major thing you might consider doing with your dead tree, but each of those pages covers the most absolute, essential information on the subject. Whenever I need a reminder about something or a piece of basic-but-new-to-me information, this is the first source I check. How wide should a table be to seat 8 people? Check. Took my hand plane apart and I'm not sure how to put it back together again? Check. Which way do you run a router around the interior of a picture frame? Check.

All this information plus loads of simple illustrations that get right to the point. This thing is an absolute gem.

It's tricky to find, but Amazon has 5 copies used right now. I strongly suggest you go get one before some other reader with the cranial capacity of a toddler beats you too it. Go on. You'll thank me for it.

* Not to diminish in any way his achievement