Novice needs advice....Again

[Ron Robinson]

I'm currently making a pair of small stands for my surround sound speakers. I've attcached two photos for reference. The first shows the stands in process. The second is a close-up of the stile on one of the stands showing the stile and the panel. You can see on this photo that the cut on the stile was less than perfect due to tear-out.

Some info:

1. Brand new Whiteside bit. Very sharp.
2. About 18,000 rpm with a PC 890.
3. Very straight grained red oak.
4. Dust collection at the fence not the greatest. (Shop Vac through an Incra fence)

Why the tear-out? My theory is poor dust collection, but was I running the router too slow? Or too fast?

Thanks,

Ron Robinson

[Richard Wolf]

Oak is very easy to get chipout, my advice would be to make atleast two passes if not more, leaving the final pass to just remove a small amount of wood.

Richard

[Michael Gabbay]

Ron -

Did you take multiple light passes? When I do a cut deeper that 1/8" I make at least 2 passes. Adjust the depth of the cut so you don't take off too much at one time. Also, depending on the overall diameter of the bit you need to adjust the speed. Since you are using rail & stile bits I would think 18K rpm is about right.

Mike

[larry merlau]

i have had that happen to me with a fresh bit as well. but i dont think that the dust collection is the cause. i feel its a combination of feed speed and the wood grain. just for a test take a similar peice of your oak and run one side one way and the other side differnt.the grian runs one way and the cut can be either with it or against it making the finsihed cut differnt as well.

[Don Baer]

I agree with Richard, Make several passes. I recently did an Oak dresser and used a cheap craftsman router(3/4 hp) with and a equally cheap but new steel bit. I took my time made several passes and had no prublems with tearout. My dust collector is nothingmore then a vaccum attached to the router fence.

[Don Baer]

Ron;
The attached link may be of some help.

http://www.patwarner.com/tearout.html

Pat Warner has a lot of good info on using routers. I have learned a lot from his web site. I have even copied some of his designs for his router fence.:D

[Ron Robinson]

Don, thanks for the link, alot of good info there. I guess I was under the false impression that stile and rail cuts should be made in one pass. Is that incorrect?

Ron

[Don Baer]

Ron,
One of the things I learned early on is that you never want to change you setup once it is set for a given operation. Especially if you are making several pieces that you want to be the same. That said then how can you control and limit the depth of cut to make multiple passes. This link shows one way of doing it using lifts to limit the amount of material to 1/4" per cut.

http://www.patwarner.com/cutter_depth.html

I took his Idea and designed a router fence to do the same thing in the fence. I'll try to post some photos later on in this thread to show you how I did this.

[Don Baer]

Ron,
Here are the pix I promised. I made this fence to attach to my TS fence with clamps since my router is mounted to my TS. As you can see there are spacers. These are 1/4 inch each. I set up my project with them removed and once I have the depth and width set up I insert the spacer as needed. Then I make all of mycuts at once, remove one spacer repeat and so on until I reach my final depth. This allows me the limit the amount of material without changing my final setup. Since I have done this I have totaly eliminated all of the problems I previously had with tearout.

I made the fence out of some scrap oak I had and less then $1. in hardware for the screws, washers and wing nuts.

[Ron Robinson]

Don,

I really appreciate the advice and all the time you took to explain your fence set-up. I love the simplicity of your solution and am sketching my own version today. This is why I love this forum.

Thank you,

Ron

[Chris Padilla]

Ron, Save your old credit cards and any "junk" ones you get in the mail. Most of them are precisely 1/32" thick and make great spacers for those times when you just need a "skotch" more take off. For that matter, heavy paper stock can act the same...cut up a few cereal boxes and you can really fine tune cuts if needed.

[Sam Blasco]

oak is definitely prone to this in certain orientations. if you have a reversable shaper, that could help. read the grain (not necessarily the figure) and have two stacks for each direction. If you don't have the equal cutters in left and right hand then one stack needs to be fed face up and the other face down after setup. the down side to this is that it takes two separate setups, and they need to be identical. several light passes in your router table can help, but the tear out will most likely still be visible on the worst pieces (i had some oak practically tear a stile in two once, piece looked like an alien feather board). the best way to avoid it is to climb cut (go with the direction of the cutter) but you have to be very careful in your set up, feed speed and depth of cut. stiles shouldn't present much of a problem climb cutting if your setup is solid (hold downs, hold ins, etc.) and it is carefully carried out.

[Eddie Valenzuela]

I'va had this problem before I talked to a router bit sales person at a WW show and he told me that the way to avoid that same tear out that you are getting was to use zero clearance fence on my router bits. and this fixed the problem.

This was real frustrating when the doors would look like that.
After setting up my router table fence with zero clearance fence made of that white plastic stock 3/4" you can get at woodworking stores or catalogs I have not had a problem since.

I use 1 1/2 hp PC router under table. I make them all in one pass.

good luck