Preventing Router From Splintering Plywood

It could be a number of things, including the plywood itself, the speed of your router, your feed rate, etc.

What type of cut are you making?

The latter is important information to give you a satisfactory answer.

Very common, a down spiral may buy you some latitude but if you can score the cut line with a knife (not necessarily fun) you can get tearout free cuts.

Cheap - fast = Dampen the wood slightly with a wet sponge (mineral free water is suggested if that is really good ply...) to reduce tearout.

Less Cheap - slower = place blue tape (low adhesion) along the edge to reduce tearout

Not so cheap = Spiral upcut or downcut bit. You want the spiral action to shear the cut from the good face towards the other edge. So if you're using a hand held router with the good side facing up you would use an upcut bit to have the shear cut spiral towards the tip of the bit. With the good side facing down, use a downcut bit so the shear cut is pulling the chips towards the router.

Bob S.

try using a backing board - clamp or tape a thin piece of wood over the cut... the same trick works for cuts made on a table saw, miter saw, etc. Also used to prevent blowout from the back of a router pass.

shelly