Firstly, I have aligned and traced around the uni-lift template I made. I am roughly cutting out the centre, NOTE: I am not following the exact contour of the uni-lift plate, I am cutting about 10mm inside this.

I am using the jigsaw to do this, and 4 holes have been drilled. Emphasis on the roughness of this stage, a jigsaw will not be accurate enough for the final cut-out and this is only to remove the bulk.

I have formed an accurate template, this is made from ply wood and is exactly 25mm less than the contour of the uni-lift. I will later cut a 25mm wide and 10mm deep rebate around the whole edge of my cutout, this will form a lip to support my uni-lift.

The 1/2" cutter I am using here will follow the template, the silver bearing at the top will follow. The cutters are flush with the bearing.

You can see I have clamped the plywood template down securely to my top, this stage is critical, and you do not want to muck this up. Any movement of the template during this process could ruin our top.

Removing the bulk with the jigsaw makes this operation go a lot smoother, the router would have hard to really work hard beforehand.

This operation caused masses of dust (as you can see) so wear a good P2 or higher mask, eye protection and when routing its advisable to wear ear protection too as it helps you concentrate.

You can see we are left with a clean, and accurately cut hole in our top. The router leaves rounded corners, and I will square these up with a sharp chisel before moving onto the next process.

This is the 1/4" rebate bit I will use, you can see again the bearing. However is it at the bottom of the cutter this time. It will follow out freshly cut edge accurately.

Here I am cutting my rebate, I first removed 5mm of the depth, and then lowered the cutter 5mm more, so 10mm in total. This is the thickness of the uni-lifts plate.

Again, think safety.

Now, its time to have a hover up then a well earned coffee break.

Click here for the next page >>>