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Feeding TooSlow
It is alsopossible to spoil a cutby moving therouter
forward tooslowly, W henit is advanced intothework
tooslowly,a revolving bit doesnotdigintonewwood
fastenough totakea bite;instead, i t simply scrapes
awaysawdust-like particles. S craping produces heat,
whichcanglaze,burn,or marthecutandinextreme
cases, c an
even overheat the bit so as to destroy its
hardness.
In addition, it is more difficult to control a router when
the bit is scraping instead of cutting. With practically
no load on the motor the bit will be revolving at close
to top RPM, and will have a much greater than normal
tendency to bounce off the sides of the cut (especially
if the wood has a pronounced grain with hard and soft
areas). As a result, the cut produced may have
rippled, instead of straight sides. See Figure 10.
"Too-slow feeding" can also cause your router to take
off in a wrong direction from the intended line of cut.
Always
grasp and hold your router firmJy with
both hands when routing.
You can detect "too-slow feeding" by the runaway,
high-pitched sound of the motor; or by feeling the
"wiggle" of the bit in the cut.
TOOFAST
DiRECTiON (EXTERNAL)
See Figure 11.
The router motor and bit revolve in a clockwise
direction. This gives the tool a slight tendency to twist
(in your hands) in a counterclockwise
direction,
especially when the motor revs up (as at starting).
Because of the extremely high speed of bit rotation
during a "proper feeding" operation, there is very little
kickback to contend with under normal conditions.
However, should the bit strike a knot, hard grain,
foreign object, etc. that would affect the normal
progress of the cutting action, there will be a slight
kickback--sufficient
to spoil the trueness of your cut if
you are not prepared. Such a kickback is always in
the direction opposite to the direction of bit rotation.
To guard against such a kickback, plan your setup
and direction of feed so that you will always be
thrusting the tool--to
hold it against whatever you are
using to guide the cut--in the same direction that the
leading edge of the bit is moving. In short, the thrust
should be in a direction that keeps the sharp edges of
the bit continuously
biting straight into new (uncut)
wood.
3:
4
6
5
k
i-1
J
PROPER CU_ING SEQUENCE
2
1
1/4 in. to 1 in.
TOOSLOW
Fig. 10
14
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