The hand-held router was invented in the early nineteen fifties and not much has happened to them since since. They, still need two hands to operate them in a router table where they get put upside down, where you cannot read the depthing scale. There are many types of windey handle to avoid pushing up on the two handles, but none as neat and quick as Woodrat’s PlungeBar. Squeeze the bars to raise the router and lock it off with one hand while you check the depth with the other. Or forget the router table and have it the right way up in a WoodRat.

It makes a clean and efficient mortiser – not as deep as a chisel mortiser, but a lot more nimble, and you have the ability to track the work with finesse…. and cut slots at exact intervals, in any length of workpiece.

There is a PlungeBar for most models of router. Festools and difficult to accommodate as they skew the fixing points and there is not much to hang onto, and the Triton has its own raising and lowering hand wheel which conflicts with bars.