Shop-Made Pin Router

A pin router is a great way to “carve” out decorative reliefs, custom-fitted recesses and signs. And when you get right down to it, a pin router is a very basic machine. There’s a router bit that lines up with a small pin in the base. The pin helps guide a template that’s attached to the bottom of the workpiece. The problem is most pin routers are large pieces of equipment typically found in a production shop. I was looking for a scaled-down version I could use in my own shop, and I came up with this handy jig.