Well.... I had my first experience with my router last weekend and it was certainly a memorable experience. I was using it in a router table and did everything I could think of to do things in a correct and safe manner. While there are no injuries to report... I must say I missed something somewhere. Lets see if I can detail what I did.. to find the error of my ways. I was attempting to route some floor molding using a 1/2'' edge beading/corner beading bit. I started with a test piece of wood, about 1.5' long to check to verify the proper height of my bit. I set the bit height the best I could visually with the unit off. This bit had a bearing on it... so I attempted to set the fence so that the bearing was riding on the wood snug without any additional pressure. I set the table's feather board to provide side pressure and hold the wood against the fence. Since the wood was 3.5'' high, I was unable to use the feather board on my fence to provide additional downward pressure. I wasn't happy about doing this.. but couldn't think of any way to avoid this without building a jig to make my fence higher. I did have the clear protective plate that goes over the bit area in place. I was moving the wood in the proper direction. About half way through the wood, it grabbed it and shot it across the room and smashed into some things sitting on a table. Yikes!!! That wasn't supposed to happen. When I inspected the wood, I could see the cut started off good (though the bit was lower than I wanted). As it progressed, I could see the routed cut becoming less and less.. ending up with some chatter like teeth marks. My conclusion was... that the outfeed side of the fence was back further than the infeed causing the wood to become loose as it reached a certain point. Is this an accurate analysis? How can I avoid this in the future? While I know this may not be perfect.. I was using the ruler marks on my router plate to try and align the fence correctly. Do I need an additional tool to perform this function more accurately?
Some other thoughts/comments/questions:
- perhaps I should have removed the bearing while using the bit in a table?
- other than trial & error, how do I know what height to set the bit? In this instance, I wanted to set it so that I was using the 'entire' bit...
Some other thoughts/comments/questions:
- perhaps I should have removed the bearing while using the bit in a table?
- other than trial & error, how do I know what height to set the bit? In this instance, I wanted to set it so that I was using the 'entire' bit...
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