Chip-Free Flush Trimming

Here's what I've done, I went to the band saw, having traced the pattern onto the material, cut outside the line, now the pattern is fastened to my material, with double faced tape. Now, remember I said we're going to talk about uphill and downhill cutting. So let's have a look at what's happening here. The material's going to be like this on the table, going in this direction, so here, the grain is sticking out, just like this, where I have a short grain, a long grain below it. As the router bit comes by, this one is supported by this one, so I'm doing a good downhill cut, on this side, everything's okay.

On this side, it's just inherent, on these cathedral raised panel doors, that when we come up the other side, I've got a longer piece of grain here, unsupported by the grain above it, because it's a little bit shorter. This is where things can go south on you, we can get some tearout and some chipping, because now we're cutting uphill. The same thing will be true on the panel itself. So again, this is where we pay off with this compression style bit, because it's going to be capable of doing the downhill cut great, and the uphill cut great too. What you'll see prescribed sometimes is, well, let's use a flush trim style bit for part of the cut, and a pattern style bit for the other part of the cut, requiring a changeover in between the two, and, you're flipping your part over between the two.

So, watch how this goes here, we'll be able to do everything, with the bit in one position, our pattern up, and all the cuts, and we'll have a look at the cut quality when we're done. When it comes to making, not just raised panel doors, but, anything where you want many parts trimmed to size, to be the same shape as a pattern, what a great approach to use the templates and do the flush trim here on the router table. Then additionally to go one step further with the tooling we're using, downhill cut, uphill cut, doesn't seem to matter. Great cut quality, and both sides of the cut, nice and smooth. So, remember when you're doing this, a cut a little bit oversize with the band saw, get your pattern on there with a double faced tape, make sure you're using the right tool for the job, so that you get a great quality cut on both sides of your curve.