The appetite of our reads for router reviewsseems to be insatiable. To make this week's review moreinteresting, we took a look at a compact router, the Porter Cable450. Until the term was coined by the company this category did noteven exit. Let's take a look at how the Porter-Cable 450 performedin our shop, and if you want to own a compact routers.

The Porter Cable 450 Compact Router

Porter-Cable calls the 450 a compact router. It is smaller thana mid size router, but significantly larger than a trim router. The450 h

Porter Cable's 557 Plate joiner has built anexcellent reputation with woodworkers in recent years. The tool isseen as the gold standard among plate joiners. Many a woodworkersings praise of this particular plate joiner in the forums.Needless to say, I was very interested in using one in my shop.Let's take a look if the Model 557 Plate joiner is all that it'smade out to be.

The 577 Plate Joiner

The 557 uses the standard push design all plate joiners use. Afence assembly positions a saw blade over the work piece theslo

The Model 342 Palm Sander

The 342 is a 1/4 sheet palm sander. Two metalspring arm mount a sheet of sanding paper on a padded sandingplate. The sander follows a very traditional design for this typeof machine. There are no innovative features or gizmos to befound.

The motor and oscillation distance of the sander are on thesmaller side. Porter Cable designed this sander to be more of afinish sander than a rapid stock removal tool. Several designdecisions reflect this assertion.

The sander has only

I use a lot of pocket hole joinery in myprojects. Every face frame I build uses at least four pocket holes.Recently I decided to upgrade from my basic

Build quality

Construction of the jig is high quality. I have little doubtthat the jig can handle anything the hobbyist can throw at it. Itwill never break in a home woodshop environment. For production,however, I fear the jig has too many moving parts. There is justtoo much that can go wrong. Since I have not used the jig in suchan environment, consider this a guess rather tha