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When you are routing a profile on a round piece, how do you avoid tearout when you hit the end grain portion? I know about light passes, etc., but that is not solving my problem! I'm trying to rabbet the outside edge of the circle, using a bearing-guided, two-flute bit. The bit is pretty new, not used much, so it should be sharp. But every time I get around to the end grain, everything goes wrong. Are there better bits I can buy? I dont have any spiral bits, maybe that's what I need? The wood is maple. Your input and guidance will be mega-much appreciated!
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When I have to route end grain I do a compression cut aka climb cut. Just go backwards from normal. When climb cutting you must be careful as the router wants to grab and pull the router into the wood. I normally use a router table as I seem to have more control of the wood as compared to a hand held router.
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I use a "down" spiral when I am doing inlay work and have good results. But I am not using a bearing. I bet a flush trim spiral bit is going to be pricey.
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I use a climb cut when using a bearing bit nearly 100% of the time when using a handheld router. I take light passes until the bearing is riding against the wood and then go back the other way to clean up any little bit it didn't get with the climb cut.
John
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(03-29-2020, 01:47 PM)lift mechanic Wrote: When I have to route end grain I do a compression cut aka climb cut. Just go backwards from normal. When climb cutting you must be careful as the router wants to grab and pull the router into the wood. I normally use a router table as I seem to have more control of the wood as compared to a hand held router.
Me too with the backwards thing, just make sure your wood is pretty secure
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Just have a piece of wood before or behind the piece you are doing.
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(03-29-2020, 01:23 PM)southgalawyer Wrote: When you are routing a profile on a round piece, how do you avoid tearout when you hit the end grain portion? I know about light passes, etc., but that is not solving my problem! I'm trying to rabbet the outside edge of the circle, using a bearing-guided, two-flute bit. The bit is pretty new, not used much, so it should be sharp. But every time I get around to the end grain, everything goes wrong. Are there better bits I can buy? I dont have any spiral bits, maybe that's what I need? The wood is maple. Your input and guidance will be mega-much appreciated!
Clamp the piece securely leaving room for the router to do the end grain first. Run a climb cut taking light passes. Practice first on a scrap, the router wants to pull out of your hands so hold it firmly. I'll assume the rabbet is 3/8" deep . Take each pass at 1/8" deep. The rabbet should be clean.
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How bad is the tear out? The reason I ask is if it's not too bad you could remove most of the material moving the router the 'right' way then use a shallow climb cut to remove the tearout. Freud makes bits they call quadra cut. they have 4 cutters. Two are conventional, two are tilted backward so they kind of scrape and help with tearout. I don't know if they make a quadra cut rabbeting bit but the quadra cut panel raising bits help quite a bit with tearout. Cutting cross grain on an oak raised panel is a lot of cross grain cutting.
