I've been using the wrong side of my router bit this whole time

Been building kitchen cabinets for 15 years and last week a young guy at a trade show in Harrisburg pointed out my flush trim bits were getting dull way too fast. He said I was running the bearing on the wrong side of the climb cut and that's why I was getting tear out on cherry plywood. I tested it on a scrap piece of Baltic birch and he was 100% right, cuts way cleaner now. Anybody else have a basic technique they missed for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaret2341mo ago

Oh, come on now. I've been running flush trim bits for 25 years and I never bothered with climb cutting or worrying about which side of the bearing is up. If your bit is sharp and you take a light pass, it just works. Sounds like that young fella had you second guessing something that wasn't really broken.

oliver_fisher1mo ago

Have you ever tried telling a guy with 25 years of experience that he might be missing something @margaret234? Because that sounds like a great way to get an earful while you're holding a spinning router bit. I get what you're saying about sharp bits and light passes, but I've seen enough kickback to know that sometimes the old "it just works" approach hides a few close calls. A friend of mine swore he didn't need climb cutting until he sent a trim bit through a cherry panel and it looked like a beaver had a snack on it.