It is nice to have tools.....

....and I dont mean woodworking tools.

My Freud router decide to do something decidedly nasty today and even my good friend Murphy could never have thought up something so despicable.

The screw that holds in the plunger that locks the shaft to facilitate bit changes came out. I noticed it as I was fumbling the router out of the table as the plunger decided to launch into my safety glass covered eye.

Never the one to panic, I looked down at the pieces and determined them all to be there. But what had caused it? I saw the problem on the collar the plunger is mounted to. A screw was balancing there between the collar and the shaft. Since I had the router completely out of the fixed base which stays attached to the table I manipulated it so I could grab it. The thing was small and my ever to agile and rock solid fingers buggered up the whole operation so it went down into the cooling vents of the router motor.

Breathe.....

Breathe.....

I tipped the router over to try and free the screw the same way it went in but I could hear nothing and saw nothing come out. I figured it had gotten hung up on one of the magnets in the motor. ( I did not even know if this was possible at the time)

So into the house I go. I lay down a white sheet so as not to lose anymore parts of this router. I dont know if it is just Freud routers or what but they use the most obscure sizes and types of fasteners. Mericifully I had all the right tools.

Jewellers screwdrivers.

Torx screwdrivers

Hex wrenches

Pliers

Combination wrenches

The only thing I did not need was a big hammer but believe me I wanted one bad.....

Took the whole contraption apart with only an exploded diagram to reference. Stator, coils, brushes, switch, etc. and there was no screw in there to be seen.

Mystified and scared out of my wits to even try such a thing, I carefully ventured out to my shed to search the floor (which by some twist of fate I had actually cleaned thoroughly before starting this morning) and found the missing screw.

Thank God for tools because if I did not have them I never could have gotten that router back together or more importantly took it apart to begin with. It took the smallest flat blade screwdriver I had (and I would guess they dont make them much smaller than this) to put that screw back in.

I still dont know if it is possible for a screw to fall down the cooling vents of a router and stick to a magnet in the motor.