I occasionally make window frames and house trim and 'stuff' out of rift sawn fir. I have an old router and a good bit.
Usually I use a bunch of clamps and spare boards, saw horses, etc and I build a guide for the router and then make a bunch of passes with the router to cut the groove or edge. Like this:
Once I have all the wood clamped right I will use the setup for a few hours, then realign for the next pass. The thing that bugs me is the entire thing is super sketchy and takes me about 90 minutes to set it up perfect (doing tests with scrap wood until the result measures perfect.) And the act of cutting with router requires EXTREME concentration so its perfect. Its ridiculously difficult and tedious.
So... At a local 2nd use store they have a variety of table tool things. I can imagine the perfect tool for me would be a huge 300lb steel table with a micrometer aligned fence that would make this cutting simple. Router would be clamped to bottom of table with bit pointing up. The thing is I don't know what this perfect thing is called.
Do I want a 'router table'? The router tables I see are these tiny flimsy things with crappy fences. Is there a name for a router table that doesn't suck?
There is a thing called a 'shaper' but it looks like it only does edges, and I need to be able to cut actual grooves. There's also a jointer but it looks like its for milling boards flat.
What is the exotic thing that I want and why aren't they more common.
Thanks!