Lyptus 2

[John Keane]

Cut the Lyptus to size for draw fronts. Attempted to put a 1/4" rabbet on the Lyptus, and experienced a degree of difficulty. Setup with a 1/4" Rockler straight bit, PC 892 @ 23K. Bit height 1/8". End grain was not a problem. Long sides big problem. The wood and the bit were in a real fight. Changed over to a Freud Super Dado and it cut the rabbet slick and easy. I never had a router bit fight with a board. I don't think that the bit was dull. It certainly hasn't had 10% of the cutting time that the Freud dado has. Working Lyptus is a new experience for me. Just thought I would share the experience. I am receptive to comments.

[Lee DeRaud]

I've had that happen with several species of wood when cutting rabbets for picture-frame stock: there's just no combination of router speed and feed rate that doesn't make the operation more trouble than it's worth. Last time was with jarrah...given that it comes from the same basic gene pool as lyptus, I'm not real surprised you ran into that problem.

I suspect it's more a problem with woods that have long tough fibers: the bit edge just bounces off the side of the fiber and can't get the cut started...and if it does, it rips the fiber coming back out.
(DId that make sense? No? Never mind...:p )

[Russ Filtz]

Would shallow climb-cutting help? I do that on woods that like to tear out. The more direct bite into the wood would either make it easier, or bounce off worse depending on how tough the wood really is!