Abbot and Costello. Peanut butter and jelly. Rum and Coke.

Some things just go together beautifully. One complements the other so perfectly, it is like they were made for each other.

And, when tools complement each other, that makes things a whole lot more enjoyable.

Case in point, the Bora wide-track router plate. My friends over at Bora sent me a copy to evaluate, and this thing is going to become a regular player in my shop.  It is basically a thin plate of clear plastic that you custom mount your router to. The key to the system, though, is how they ride on the Bora Clamp Edge cutting guides.  The cutting guides have this track on the edge that I have often wondered about, and it seems as if the clamp was just waiting for the right interlocking tool to make it complete.

The guide slides smoothly across the track back and forth. Now, imagine, you are building a bookshelf that needs dadoes and rabbets to hold shelves and a top.  Simply clamp the two sides together, and clamp the wide edge clamp across both pieces. Simply plunge the router down and get accurate cuts across both pieces – without having to worry if you are drifting away from the cutting edge. Which is much easier to do than you might imagine, given the rotational cutting of the router bit.   And, if you are looking to stop your rabbet – it’s easy to do with a plunge router.

If you can dedicate a fixed base on a multi-based router to this jig, imagine how quickly you can change your router to work with this plate – and you can also use the plate for times when you need a wider base to ensure the router doesn’t drop into an opening you may have cut on a jig.