The next cuts I made on the bottom plate were the two slots that hold the side plates. Straight slots like this can normally be cut using a guide that the edge of the router plate can run against, but these are to close to the edge to be able to do that easily, so I went back to the router guide collar. These are 3/4” wide so I setup my router with a 3/4” bit and a 1” guide collar. The guide strips are just pieces of MDF that I screwed to the plate. Be sure to drill counter sunk holes for the screws so that they will be below the surface of the wood and not scratch the router base plate. To get the gap between the guides just right I attached the first one, then next to it I put a 1” block, then a couple strips of paper and finally the second guide. The pieces of paper give you just enough clearance for the guide collar to slide smoothly. For the length of the cut you could put stop blocks on either end, or just eyeball it as I did since the length isn’t entirely critical. Since these slots don’t run off the ends you will either need to use a plunge router, or just gently tip the router into the work.
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