Climb-Cutting – Viewer Question
I just received an email that reminding me of a very important topic that I wasn’t able to go into detail on in “A Cut Above” (Part 2), and this is climb-cutting. Here is Jonathan’s email:
“I had always read you route counter clockwise so the router is actually pulled into the table by the spinning bit. Then on part two of your cutting board series, I noticed you said you routed your cutting boards clockwise to avoid tear out. Is this just a specific method for end grains or does it really make a difference which way the router goes?”
Here was my reply:
“Hi Jonathan. It does indeed matter which direction you choose to rout. Whenever possible, you want to rout counter-clockwise when doing an outside perimeter (and clockwise for the inside perimeter of something like a picture frame). But there are times when the grain doesn’t exactly cooperate, and going in the counter-clockwise direction creates major chip-out. In many of those cases, your best option is to take light cuts and to climb cut (clockwise). Now this can be dangerous when you are removing a bunch of material, because it can actually throw the workpiece away from the router. So you will notice that my first pass is a very light one. You dont want to remove more than 1/8″ on that first pass. Once you have that nice clean starter cut, you can resume removing stock in the counter-clockwise direction.
Climb-cutting is something to be used judiciously and I wish I had more time to go into detail in the video. But let it suffice to say that I usually do it as a last resort. If small incremental counter-clockwise cuts dont get the job done, then I climb-cut. Always keep in mind though, the less stock you remove with the bit, the safer it is to climb-cut. But please be very careful when you do this operation.”
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