Why you DON'T do this on Router Tables

g'day guys today i'm going to show you what i know about router tables what to do and what not to do so firstly we want to put a router bit in there so i've got a router under here which is a triton tra double 01 router with a half inch collet or a half inch shank there which will accept the half inch shank round a bit so that goes in there you notice how i slam that down and it stops it's hitting something at the bottom that's important to take away take note of so as i tighten this down so i haven't actually tightened it down very much but if i was to tighten that down you'd say that that's probably good enough but there's a problem with what i've done there as i tighten that nut it grabs on to the shank of that router bit and pulls it down a little bit but because it was already hard down on the or the the spindle below it it can't actually move down so it's not technically tight that's a really big problem that i've just done there so to alleviate that i loosen it again you see how it gets stuck so i want to put it down get it finger tight lift it up a little bit a couple of mil doesn't need much and then tighten it and so as i'm tightening that tighten in that nut that nut is pulling that shank down and it's got clearance to actually move downwards a little bit so that when i actually tighten it down like that this is good and tight it's good and secure ain't going anywhere so here i have my fence now i want this fence to be in line with the front of that bearing for this a bit now these rounder bits these quarter round round over bits are the easiest ones to set up because you can just bring your fence forward get yourself a straight edge and then position that straight edge just in front of that bearing and then tap the fence backwards just a little bit and then make sure that the bearing is ever so slightly behind that straight edge so that when you bring a bit of timber through it doesn't bump into that bearing a little bit behind is perfectly fine so that's pretty good there i'll just get it ever so close to perfect right about there i reckon now these routers that we use they only spin one way now here's a router bit it's always going to spin that way so when we feed if this is spinning this way and we're going to cut on that front edge of the router we if that's spinning that way we want to feed from that direction there we want our feed direction to be in opposition to the spin direction of the router bit so we're going to feed from right to left and that's the safe way to do it that's the appropriate way to do it [Music] now you might have thought i pushed that through the cutter very very quickly and i did i've done that quite deliberately just to illustrate just how easy it is to feed this through the cutter the correct way from right to left in opposition to the spin direction which is going from left to right i'll demonstrate that again but this time instead of putting my whole hand there and holding it fairly firmly even though i'm passing my hand in front of the cutter you shouldn't do that it's a bad habit but instead i'll simply use my push stick and i'll push at this back corner where i really have no real control if this could move out that way for example i've got no real control and we'll see how easy it is to do it like that [Music] [Laughter] [Music] pretty easy right now there's a reason for that although i've only got pressure at this back point here this would easily flick out like that but because that router bit is there if i get an example because that router bit is there it's moving that router bit is spinning this way and so it spins there and actually pulls it back into the fence but actually wants to move back into the fence so although i've only got pressure at this back point it's actually always been pulled into the fence from this point now when i go from right to left on the other hand or left to right i should say climb cut it's actually going to hit that timber here and push it away from the fence and there's all this uncut timber behind it which it's going to want to throw and make a mess so i'll show you why you never ever do that [Music] now did you see what happened there i'm climb cutting now because the router bit is spinning this way like i said it actually wants to push it away from the fence and therefore what's actually happening is because it actually takes some resistance to cut through material it's saying look you don't have enough pressure pushing that way to overcome that outwards push it simply actually just pushed it away from the cutter and the amount of pressure i had on that stick there was enough to hold it back shoot so and go away so if i put a little bit of pressure there let's see what happens [Music] all right so let's break down what just happened there so there's my router bit and we're spinning this way and we've fed from left to right now when we've gone from right to left the normal way this is spinning this way and we've moved in an opposition so it's just grabbed timber clean the timber away and as that moves along all this timber here is now cleaned away this is going to be cut but when we're climb cutting going left to right it starts cutting here and it actually wants to throw the timber that way which then all this timber which hasn't been cut yet is there ready to be grabbed by the cutter and that's exactly what happens so you can see that it started to cut through here and it's sort of cut it hasn't actually cut properly you can see that there's a cutter mark here here here here here and that's one cutter mark is one chomp one chomp one chomp and as you as it speeds up it starts to shoot across the table a little bit faster those cutter marks get further and further apart once we go out to here until eventually he has taken a great big chunk out let's just rip the timber apart and then there's one here there's one here there's one here and one here so we ended up we started off with cutter marks at about three millimeters apart over here we're at about six millimeters apart and over here we're at 12 millimeters apart as it got faster and faster it's going chomp chomp chomping it eventually gathers up let's call it terminal velocity for lack of a better description all right so now we see what's happening this is why we do not want to climb cut because as it cuts here it's that it grabs it and because it's got all of this ammunition behind that which hasn't been cut yet it can continue to chomp and throw it faster and faster if this was longer if this was a heavier piece of timber it'd actually do a lot of damage to you so here i have my thicknesser it's a combo machine which allows me to take it all apart you can see how it it works we have a table at the bottom which is our reference table from there we have our cutter head supported above that table a set distance apart which allows us when we put timber through here it'll rest on that surface there and this cutter will remove any material above our desired height leaving a thickness to board from there you have a roller at the back and a roller at the front and some anti-kickback devices those two rollers hold the board down hard on our reference surface and the cutter head simply removes the material above it now people understand how this works and so they go out of their way and they set this sort of thing up over on their router table let's go have a look at that so here i have the router table set up with a straight cutting bit with my fence set behind there a set distance between the fence and the cutter so when i put this bit of timber in between here it's going to cut away that edge there leaving me a perfectly thicknessed board because this is basically a thicknesser there's my thickness of table there's my thickness of cutter head it's just been turned on the side and it's now going to create a thickness board after i cut through here and as we discovered earlier we need to feed from right to left right it's actually wrong you actually need to be feeding from left to right in this case because the cutter head is still going this way and we need to feed in opposition to the spin direction but people forget this and so they feed from right to left because that's the common way to do it so let's do that and we'll see what's going to happen we already know what's going to happen but we'll do it anyway so there we have it we were probably all expecting that we've pushed it through here that route a bit spinning that way it's grabbed that timber and jen's thrown it right now this is a really really dangerous setup and it's unexpected because what a lot of people would do they're feeding from right to left which is their normal brain sequence and they're going to push it with their hands and then they're going to be pulled in with it and because that shoots across their hand it's just going to go bang and so that's why it's a really really bad idea to have your timber between the fence and the cutter that fence actually needs to be moved forward and if you wanted to remove three millimeters of material here you have that fence three millimeters behind the front of that edge you put it up against the fence and just clean off that edge there nice and safe in front of it but once you've got your timber between the fence and the cutter it creates all sorts of problems now obviously this was a climb cut scenario because we're moving the timber forwards in the same direction as the spin of the cutter so let's set it up the other way i'll move the fence a little bit closer so i can take off that edge and we'll go from left to right which is feeding in opposition to the spin direction that should work right [Music] [Music] so that was exactly as expected the cutters hit that corner i was trying to clean off five millimeters of this edge here but it didn't even get close it's hit that corner and just turfed it straight away what's happened is that router bit is moving this way spinning this way which means that cutter edge here is close to the fence and as it spins it moves away from that fence so as this timber comes through that cutter hits that timber turns and pulls the timber away from the fence at 18 000 rpm so it just goes straight away we had no chance what we actually need on a thicknesser you've got your your base you've got your cutter head and there's also the pressure bars one here in front of the cutter and one behind it and that stops that board from moving away so what you could potentially do in order to put some pressure here to stop that from moving away get one of these feather boards but you get these feather pros these are pretty good or whether you make your own you put one here in front of the cutter one behind the cutter and that feather board it's got adjustable little things here which allows the inconsistent edge here because we're trying to make this a nice clean straight perfectly thickness edge and that might not be straight at the moment that allows that to flow through there nice and easily and that stops that board from moving off that fence which is our reference fence this is putting all that pressure onto our fence here holding that onto there it creates it just like a thicknesser so that there is just an idea to get you out of trouble if you do need a thicknesser for some oddball reason and you don't have a thicknesser and you for whatever reason you don't want to put it on a table saw and just put a sawn edge on there this does work but it does present all sorts of problems like as a general rule you never put your timber between your fence and your cutter but you can do it if you think about it you set it all up but it does expose that cutter completely like if i'm just standing here talking i'm just waving my hand saying hey what's the matter uf i've just cut my hand off because the cutter is completely exposed but if you've set it up properly safely appropriately you'll generally have let's say if i was trying to take three or more three millimeters off the front of that board i'd have that cutter exposed three and three millimeters in front of the fence and i'd simply feed from right to left and it'll take off three millimeters so although there's a lot more to do with router tables i think that will cover it for this video hopefully you enjoyed it hopefully you've learned something no need to go and recreate anything that i've done here because you've seen it you know exactly what's going to happen you don't have to do it yourself because it's just going to throw boards a million miles an hour so thanks for watching and i'll catch us later

Channel: Kuffy's Woodwork Tips and Talk

Views: 37,780

Keywords: woodworking, router table, kuffys woodwork

Id: KPx3cptC4WI

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021