Router bit question

Don't try to take too much wood off in one pass, feed it too fast, or force feed. Those were my early mistakes. Let the bit do its work. If you hear if bogging down, it probably is.

Steve

Slide a bit further down the slippery slope and start seeing a router table/fence in your future. Fences and guides make for much more precision in your routing work.

Also, what Bridger said.

"Swingman" wrote in news:XZCdnRpfW6c5fHPZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Don't go out and spend $50 on a table fence yet. You need to go out and spend $2 on a board and $200-400 on a planer to make sure it's straight. Then, use the board for a fence.

A short (say 2') 1x2 may just be straight enough for most fence purposes if 100% straight isn't a concern. I was using that yesterday rather than my table mounted router's fence. (It has a 4" gap around the bit which makes some operations difficult.)

Puckdropper

snipped-for-privacy@robmward.com wrote in news:1156480821.508417.233310@

You may want to watch The Router Workshop. They'll show you the right way to do things unlike some other shows that simply show the tool functioning.

If your PBS station doesn't carry it, it's available on Woodworking TV on the Internet. (Someone else will have to give you the URL, I can't find it.)

Puckdropper

Some speculation here about what you were really doing...

I'll guess you were talking about two roundover cuts, one on each side of the board, and using the built-in bearing on the bit to guide the cut. If so, then you _were_ grinding more wood on the second pass. If you're intending to round over the edges, you can't really route away the whole edge. Rounding over the edges this way means using a roundover bit where its size is _less_than_half_ of the thickness of the workpiece. I.E a 1/2" roundover is too big for a 1" board - especially if the thickness is really closer to 3/4".

Now if you use an edge guide of some sort - either attached to the router baseplate or - even better - a fence on a router table (either fancy or simple), then you can do this kind cut more easily and smoothly.

Check the references that others have directed you toward...