Safety notes

Although care was taken in the design of this machine, no two shop built machines will be strictly identical.

It is assumed that the builder is skilled in woodworking. This should not be your first woodworking project. It is also assumed that the builder is already familiar with the safe operation of routers.

Woodgears.ca cannot be held liable for injuries that you may incur with your pantorouter.

Some safety tips

• A potential danger with mounting the router inside this machine is that the router's switch may bump against the template or the template holder and be turned on unexpectedly.

  To avoid this risk, it is advisable to use an on/off switch separate from the router body, and always leave the switch on the router body turned on. That way, bumping the router's switch will never cause it to turn on unexpectedly.

  A further safety improvement is to use a router with a slow start. Such a router starts off very slowly, thus giving time to get one's hands out of the way before injury occurs if it should start unexpectedly.

• The router bit is relatively exposed in this jig. This has the advantage that it's easy to see the router bit working. However, if the router bit or a piece of wood were to be thrown off, there is nothing to catch the wood. This is especially true when making external cuts, such as when making tenons. Eye protection is therefore essential.

• Always make sure the stock is well fastened. As the cleanest cuts are achieved when making "climb cuts", which tend to pull the stock in to the router and vice versa, stock becoming loose during operation can result in kickback or the stock ejected from the machine. Therefore, always make sure the stock is adequately fastened down.

• There is the risk that one might cut into the table if one is not careful. The plans, as designed, do not have any screws in the table where the router bit might reach them. If you add extra screws to the table, be sure that they are out of reach of the router bit.