BoschRA1054 Deluxe Router Edge Guide with Dust Extraction Hood & Vacuum Hose Adapter

The Bosch edge guide attached perfectly to my 34 year old Bosch 1611EVS plunge router. The supplied lock knobs threaded into the holes in the base of the 1611EVS router with no issues, and clamped the guide securely in place for a couple of recent routing tasks that used the edge guide to establish a maximum cut width. The optionally attached dust collection port is sized to perfectly fit a Festool dust extractor hose. The attachment and removal of the dust collection port, while straightforward, is unnecessarily time consuming as two captured nuts must be removed and relocated, and the fence must be partially disassembled and reassembled. That dust collector port will likely have limited usefulness in exchange for the bulkiness that it adds to the edge guide, as the dust collector port will only collect chips when using a router to create a groove in the edge of a board, or possibly when using an edge profiling bit with or without a guide bearing. As an observation, the required guide rod spacing on my Milwaukee routers and Porter Cable routers are different from that used on the Bosch routers. In short, the core functionality of the edge guide works as expected, and the edge guide offers perfect compatibility with Bosch routers dating back to at least 1990.

In my experience, most edge guides for free-hand power tools are lacking, usually in quality, stability or both. That is NOT the case with this edge guide. I bought this to compliment my Bosch 1617EVSK Router Kit, which I also purchased from Amazon. The guide feet, while plastic, are wide, level, and smooth...allowing extreme ease of movement along any edge, including particleboard or rough-cut plywood. What's more, the fine-tune adjustment knob allows you to adjust the guide's distance in micro-measurements to complete control of the accuracy of your measurements. It also works well with both the fixed and plunge bases, and I noticed no measurable chatter while using the guide. It's also a sturdy construction, and a fairly heavy unit, as far as guides go.This is truly a must-have for anyone who does a lot of free-hand routing, regardless of whether you own a router table or not.A couple of other notes:First, when attaching the guide to the router base, be sure to use a screwdriver to fully tighten the locking screws. Hand tightening will lead to slippage causing imprecise cuts.Second, adjusting the guide initially, while not overly tricky, is slightly cumbersome. Easily mastered, to be sure, but if there was any room for improvement in the design of this guide, it would be how the distance is adjusted and locked into place.I also cannot comment on the vacuum hose adapter, since I've not used it.

I want to add some clarifying comments to those thinking of purchasing this guide. I'm using it with a Bosch 1617 routerIt's big! Based on the photo I wasn't expecting the fence to be so long. This helps with stability.It looks complicated with lots of gismos, but actually it's very easy to understand and operate. There's an axillary set of openings in the cross pieces for smaller rods at a closer spacing. There is no stated purpose, but these could be used to add extensions.The micro adjust works well. The ring scale can be zeroed to make relative adjustments easy to keep track of. This appears to work as well as high-priced after market fences.The micro adjust does not work with the circle cutter. However, it could be used if the owner makes a simple wooden block or metal block with some threaded holes.The circle cutter is very easily extended using 3/8" steel rods available at home improvement stores. I used some 3-foot rods to make a 2-foot radius circle. This is a big plus. By coupling rods together, very large radius circles or circle segments can be cut.I was dubious about the circle center, which is a plastic device that looks like a suction cup (it's not) you tape down. However, I'm now sold on it. I easily aligned it to the circle center with cross hairs. I then taped it down with duct tape and cut my circle. A pin on the device guides the trammel and it felt very secure. No hole drilling to mar the work, no vacuum device needed. Very simple and efficient. As a good machine should be.

Kia ora from New Zealand.After some serious interweb sleuthing and measuring my SKIL routers I took a punt and ordered the BOSCH RA1054 Router Edge Guide in the expectation that I could get it to fit the SKIL router bases. It turns out I was correct.The setup works pretty well considering the mismatch between the BOSCH 100mm and the SKILL 104mm rod spacing. Things can get a wee bit snug but not to bad. Just don't force anything and all will be good.Here's how to do it.1. Swap the BOSCH 9.5mm diameter guide rods out with the 7.9mm guide rods from your basic SKIL router guide. This helps alleviate the binding caused by the rod spacing discrepancy. The BOSCH 9.5mm rods wont fit into the 7.9mm SKIL rod bosses anyway. Two birds, one stone.2. Don't put the BOSCH rod springs on the SKIL rods. Put both of them on the fine adjustment threaded bar with a washer either side. They tend to bind up the works if you put them on the SKIL rods.3. Route stuff.I hope that helps all you SKIL router users out there.As a side note, the BOSCH guide's dust extraction port (the black plastic bit) perfectly fits the hose on a STANLEY FATMAX V20 battery powered wet and dry vacuum.I like the guide. The adjuster is nice and smooth and the dust extraction hood works pretty well depending on what you are doing. The only thing that lets it down a little is that the casting on the fine adjustment guide (J in the manual) is a bit thin. If you were ham fisted with the locking screws I'm sure it would break. I took one star off because of this giving it a 4 out of 5.Happy routing!

This is a great edge guide - reliable, stable, holds its settings well. If you have this router, get this guide!