Best dovetail bit???

[Jon Bonham]

I purchased an Amana 1/2" 14 degree 1/4 shank dovetail bit to make some drawers. It has become dull after only 4 drawers. Is this normal? I have tried to go at a slow pace, not really getting any burning, just a lot of chipping and I can tell the bit is feeling a little bogged down. Are Amana generally considered good bits or should I be using something else? It's not like they gave it away, I think I paid $17 for it. It has to be 1/4 shank, I'm using it in my PC 690 with a collar for the dovetail jig.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Jon

[Steve Clardy]

I use whiteside bits.

From...
Routerbits.com
Woodcraft.com


I've done maybe 50 drawers with my present bit.

[Jim Becker]

Amanna makes good cutters. Hopefully, you purchased a carbide tipped cutter...there are some HHS cutters floating around out there!

Question, when you cut your dovetails, (assuming you are talking about half-blinds) do you do a light climb cut across the board before you start milling the dovetails? Are you working slowly and only taking a little material at a time? The first thing will help establish a clean shoulder as well as get rid of a bit of material. The second is important in two ways: Firstly, it reduces the stress on the shank of the bit. It also puts less strain on the actual cutting edge.

You may want to keep a diamond hone available to touch up the inside edges of your cutter from time to time, but you should certainly be getting many, many drawers out of a single cutter as Steve points out. I haven't done that many with my jig simply because I've been outsourcing drawer boxes for my larger home improvement projects, but even so, the cutters I use are still nearly as sharp as when I bought them several years ago.

[Brandon Shew]

Any pitch buildup on the blade edge? That will cause cutting issues as well.

[Jon Bonham]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a climb cut? Obviously, I'm not doing one so that may be the problem.

The router bit is definitely carbide, part no 45804.

[Jim Becker]

A climb cut is when you make a very light cut in the opposite direction you normally would when using the router. For a hand-held router you would normally move left to right on the outside of a workpiece including when using a dovetail jig. The starting cut I described is when you make a very light cut straight across the front of the board mounted in the front of your dovetail jig (without engaging the fingers) from right to left. This makes for a very clean shoulder on the inside of the drawer and leaves a little less material to machine when you then start doing the actual dovetails, typically from left to right. I also like to "touch them up" with a final pass through the jig from right to left to insure I didn't miss any material as I navigated the fingers.

Climb cuts are not something to do universally...they have their purposes, but if you do them and try to take too much material, the tool can kick with the subsequent safety hazards. Most of the time, they are employed as a "cleaning" technique or to adjust for an abrupt change in grain direction when edging a workpiece.