Porter-Cable 690LR 11 Amp 1-3/4 Fixed Base Horsepower Router

Porter-Cable 690LR 11 Amp 1-3/4 Fixed Base Horsepower Router | Great no-frills router

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Porter-Cable 690LR...

	Porter-Cable 690LR 11 Amp 1-3/4 Fixed Base Horsepower Router Porter-Cable Porter-Cable average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Solid, die cast and precision machined aluminum motor housing and base. Micrometer depth of cut control. Permanently sealed ball bearing construction. Self releasing collet system automatically frees bit from collet when loosened. Flat top design for fast

GREAT ROUTER - LOOK NO FURTHER

Being a do-it-yourself homeowner, over the years I've owned many tools. However, until purchasing this Porter Cable 690LR router, I had never owned a router before. I had always wanted one but could never justify making a purchase. Heck, my idea of fine woodworking usually entailed 2x4's, wood screws, and glue. But there came a day recently when I decided to take on the project of making cabinets for my kitchen. For this project a router was an absolutely essential piece of equipment for making dovetail and dato joints in hardwood and hardwood plywood. It was also necessary for decorative finishing like chamfering and rounding edges, etc.

After doing some research, (after all I knew nothing about routers), I decided to take a chance on this Porter Cable product. From the reviews, it seemed like a solid product, so why not? After receiving it from Amazon, I was very impressed with the quality of the tool. It was very simple and well made. It came with both a 1/4" and a 1/2" bit collar to hold either 1/4" or 1/2" shaft size bits. It also came with two stamped steel wrenches used to tighten the nut on the collar to the nut located on the bottom of the motor part of the assembly. When tightened, these two nuts securely hold the bit in the router. It has a fixed aluminum base which has two handles, a built-in clamping mechanism, and a plastic screw-on bottom plate that allows the base to smoothly glide over wood. It also has a top assembly which includes the motor, on/off switch, and on the bottom the part that the base slides and rotates over. If you don't know about routers like I didn't, fixed base routers cut at fixed depth as opposed to plunge routers which can plunge into the work for applications like making letters in wood signs, etc. However, cut depth on fixed base routers like this PC 690LR is completely adjustable with an infinite amount of settings within its range of depth. It adjusts by releasing the easy to use clamping mechanism on the base by and rotating the base relative to the top.

For routers, as long as your router has enough power for your application, and this one absolutely did for mine, accuracy and ease of cutting depth adjustment is THE most important aspect of fine router woodworking in projects like making cabinets, etc. With this PC 690LR router's accurate turning and clamping mechanism, I would have to say that depth adjustments of less that 1/64th of an inch and perhaps less than 1/128th of an inch are absolutely possible. I was very impressed with the extreme accuracy of depth adjustment obtainable with very little effort in this tool. Needless to say, the dovetail joints fit perfectly together and dato joints were cut excellently-very tight with no variations.

The base on this router has a black band on its top that you can see in the pictures. It is a rotatable dial graduated in 1/64th of an inch increments designed as a reference guide to allow for changes in depth adjustment.

This router does not have a variable rotation speed setting-rotation speed is fixed at 27,000 RPM. You can easily attach this router to a factory made router table or, as I did, to a make-shift router table made of plywood and set on top of my table saw base stand. This is accomplished by removing the three screws that hold the plastic base plate onto the aluminum base, removing the plastic base plate, and by using the same 3 screws or 3 longer screws to fasten the aluminum base of the router to the bottom side of the router table top. (To more easily accomplish this and other things like tightening the nuts, the aluminum base of the router easily detaches from the top motor assembly after the clamping mechanism is quickly loosened.)

To cut 1/2" dovetail joints you will need to purchase a 7/16th" router template guide bushing adapter that fits into the bottom of the plastic base. This will slide into the 7/16th" template guide that you will use in a dovetail machine or by itself (I used only the template guide screwed to a 2x6 as I didn't want to spend the big bucks for an official machine) to cut 1/2" dovetails.

To sum it all up, this is a terrific router because of its quality, accuracy, and easy to use features. It is well worth the money Amazon is asking for it. You may find cheaper and for that matter, more expensive routers on the market that I know will not work better and many probably not nearly as well. But if fixed base router applications are in your future, this is the router to get.

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Great no-frills router

I needed a couple of routers to go with my Leigh dovetail jig and these were the most inexpensive good name routers I could find. I bought 2 of them and set one up for tails and one for pins and just leave them set up for that one task. They perform flawlessly and now I can just grab them and know they will give me a perfect joint every time.

Great router, good price

This router is awesome! I am hooked on buying tools via Amazon because I got a real Porter Cable router for a great price. The router is solid, has worked perfectly for me thus far, and is really smooth. You can tell it's a quality tool just by the sound of it and the silky feel. Really, nothing else to report, and I think that's how it should be for a tool like a router. It just works every time, plain and simple.

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Rating the 690LR

Have only used it once, but like it very much. Most of my power tools are Porter-Cabe

Porter Cable 690lr

Bought my first Rockwell router in 1974. I own 3 of these and have jigs made to accept the base, and many specialized bases to fit this router. It's more efficient for me to set up a router and leave it for a designated job. When I'm doing a run I can have as many as 5 different routers set up. This PC has a different base lock that seems to work very easily, along with the newer style chuck that makes for easy bit removal.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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