Making The Paul Sellers Router Plane

Making the Paul Sellers router is a straightforward project that requires a few basic woodworking hand tools and an electric drill driver. If you are making one from one of our kits, you will only need to source the wood for the router body (and handles).

If, however, you are making a router without a kit, you will also need to source the handful of metal components separately, which will include making the cutting iron and retainer bar. This is what Paul did originally, and you can watch the process here.

A Note on Wood Selection:

Most dense-grained hardwoods will work but dark, oily woods will mar the surface of woods being worked. Choosing a more neutral wood like beech, ash, cherry, oak and many more will work fine. Choose a wood with denser grain as soft-grained woods will compress under the pressure applied to the plane in use. In this how-to I am using beech which is a traditional wood for planes and has good stability, resistance to wear and takes hardware well too.