Essential Router Skills: A NO BS Beginner's Guide to Woodworking

hi my name is Jonathan Kats Moses and Welcome to our new series no BS woodworking where we have no fluff no sponsorships and of course no BS now because this is the first one I wanted to explain my motive behind this series now a few years ago YouTube started rewarding creators for longer form content which made videos really long and then platforms like Tik Tok Instagram reals and of course now YouTube shorts came along and people were rewarded for like high octane short form ey candy content and I think what is missing is utilitarian actionable content that you can take immediately and go use in for our genre the shop so I wanted to create that content as always these videos are supported only by the people that visit my website all the opinions and information in here is from me and me alone I’m not encouraged to say anything or promote anything like that now without further Ado I wanted to get into the first installment in this series which is routers now we’re going to cover the types of routers when you would use each type the types of bits safety and some other basic uses of them and you should be able to take this information for somebody who has never used a router before and go into the shop immediately and start using one so let’s get into it and start talking about the types of routers routers are incredibly versatile that’s why they’re kind of the do- it the other way tool what that means is they are the tool when something feels unsafe or tough to do or you don’t own the correct tool routers can do just about anything if you think hard enough that’s why typically people buy a router as the next tool after a table saw or maybe tabl saw planer and then router they come in two different types there are fixed Bas which means you adjust it turn it on and it is set at that depth and that’s how you use it and then plunge base which means it is adjustable in height as you’re working they come in about three different sizes which is around one horsepower which is what we call a palm or a trim router a midsize or sometimes people call them fullsize router which is going to be 2 to three horsepower and then some really beast mode routers which are three horsepower plus now let’s coming to the bench I’m going to show you the anatomy of each type of router and give you some vocabulary for when we talk about other things in this video These are the motors of the small guys they come in a battery or quarter power I prefer battery the difference with these is they only come in a/ quter inch Callet whereas when you move up to a midsize or fullsize router they will have both quarter inch and half inch collets what that means is the size of the shank of the router bit the shank is the area below the cutting area this is/ inch and/ quarter inch this router will accept both these router will only accept a quarter inch the difference with the full size is they usually only come in a plunge base and that’s because you’re typically going to use those for big operations like flattening slabs and lots of other things we can talk about later there’s a speed adjustment dial on all of them which allows you to change the RPM of the motor that those numbers don’t mean anything because it is different with every brand you just need to look in your owner’s manual it tell you what those numbers correspond to we’ll talk about feeds and speeds again in another video now let’s talk about the bases and the difference between those there are two types of router bases fixed and plunge any size of router is going to have a fixed and plunge base and if you’re shopping make sure that it does before you buy because even if you don’t get it now you will want it later now they’re very simple and I’m going to bring you in here and show you how they work now first things first you’re going to insert your bit now like I was talking about in the previous section there’s a button that will stop this post from moving you can see this little hole right here you’re going to line that up with the button you can feel it it is locked in you’re going to insert the bit that you want and tighten it you can start by hand and then using a wrench you can tighten it you honestly don’t need to crank on it so hard that you’re straining as long as it’s tight you’re going to be great then you’re going to take it in either your plunge base or your fix base there’s typically a line in your motor like this that will line up with a couple pins in the base you line those up with your clamp released just like that you want to insert it all the way and then lock it down you don’t want to put your motor halfway in it should go all the way in and seat that is going to be the same for fixed base as well this DeWalt has this ring that comes off which you need to remove and you just thread it onto your router then same thing you line the grooves up on your motor and the pins inside the base and then it locks in just like that you’re going to adjust the height lock it in and use it from there now let’s talk about a plunge base because it’s a little bit more intricate now all plunge bases are roughly the same they have a trigger on them like this that is going to allow the motor to move up and down and then you will push it and that’s what locks it in same thing with this guy you can put it down like that and lock I much prefer the ones that are always tight and you loosen with your finger it makes use a little bit easier now one of the coolest features about plunge base is this right here it’s this adjustment mechanism I have a great two-minute Tuesday on these I’ll link all the videos and all the tools we talk about in this video down below in the pinned comment and description all right what makes this so cool well here’s two use cases for this one we’ve established zero right and A good rule of thumb for bits is you never want to take more than the diameter in depth so this is a/ inch bit I don’t want to go more than a half inch down per pass with routers it’s really important to know that the less you take the easier it’s going to be the less chance of it kicking around so go take small bites with a router but let’s say we want to take a half inch pass we know that right here is zero if I go two clicks because these are each a quar inch one two we’re now at a/ inch we don’t have to measure and check let’s go back to zero here’s another great way to use this so we’re at zero right we’ve established that and now we want to cut down to do some joinery let’s say we have a Tenon we could take any piece of material lift this up here put this between my depth stop and that top stop and I now know that is going to be exactly the depth of my material and I’ll show you here flip this over you can see look at that that’s the exact height of my material there lastly when would you use each one of these a plunge base is going to be great for things like morse’s stopped Doos anytime you’re working in the middle of a board and you’re not going to exit it’s going to be great a fixed space is going to be great for anytime you’re starting outside the board and exiting outside the board so that might be a rabbit any round overs these are great for roundover and chamfers I have one that I just keep a chamfer bit or a roundover bit all the time and I just grab that for doing the edges profiling of boards I would say that I use my plunge base most of the time and then fix base for things where I know the exact depth I’m going to do that over and over and over now routers come with a lot of accessories there’s a million accessories you can get the most common one and a lot of routers will come with a cheap Edge guide like this one it allows you to follow an edge like this and be repeatable you can buy nice aftermarket ones with micro adjust on them also router bushings these are the ones we sell on our website they’re great for following templates and can be used for tracing complex objects this is a router table again one we sell but there are tons of options out there there fulls size and trim router Router tables like this one they’re great because they make a lot of things more safe because your router is fixed you’re bringing the material to the router bit rather than the router bit to the material there’s no work holding concerns they have a fence which allows you to do a lot more things that a router can’t do in by itself so that’s sort of the anatomy of the router and some accessories let’s talk about safety router safety has three aspects that’s PPE personal protective equipment workholding and technique for personal protective equipment you’re going to need eyes and ears those are essential for any tool and then because routers have poor dust collection and they’re handheld you’re usually not collecting very much of the chips that kicking up so a dusk mask or a respirator are all going to be really important for maintaining good safety with them now when it comes to work holding there’s three ways to do it we have a great blog on our website again I’ll link everything down below but there’s three basic things you can do the first type of work holding is going to be something like one of these non-slip pads now I wouldn’t cut a deep mortise on this but I would do round overs all day on this this thing’s not going to go anywhere and the act of rounding over or chamfering an edge is going to be great for these they’re also great for finishing on uh the next thing you can do is bench dogs they come in a variety of shapes and sizes they’re great for anytime you’re working on like the face of a board so for example this mortise if I need to do that we could lock it in here with the vice if I wanted to I could tighten these with a wrench that comes with them but that’s going to allow me to work on this mortise just like this it’s going to be super secure and of course lastly is the obvious one which would be clamps or a vice this is our Mox and Vie just Slide the board into your Vie and then this is Rock Solid it’s not going anywhere clamps are tough because when you start clamping things they tend to get in the way but of course sometimes they are necessary and you can just move them and you know work around them there’s three important things to remember for use one first one most important small bites the smaller the bite the easier it is to use your router you never want to go more than the diameter of your bit in depth the second thing is Direction so when you are looking at a picture frame Pretend This is a picture frame frame when you are moving on the outside you are going to be going counterclockwise and on the inside you are going to be going clockwise the reason for that is the bit is scooping that is denoted again on the base of your router it is telling you which way that is spinning now you can use that Arrow to tell you which way to go because you want that Arrow to be going in the direction that you are pushing on your material the second way to remember this is the right hand trick you take your right hand and you point your thumb in the direction of your router bit the router bit is going to be going in the direction you close your fingers so it’s going to be scooping so to put add it to the picture frame model our thumb is down when we’re going outside we want to be scooping our material this way same thing when we’re inside we want to be scooping our material this way so clockwise on the inside counterclockwise on the outside the third thing about use is how to hold your router now when you’re using a router how you hold it it’s going to be about three different ways to hold it you’re going to have a fuller size router with handles that’s of course going to have two handles uh you’re you’re going to want to put your weight down on the hand an area that is supported by the workpiece and then use your hand that may not be supported by the workpiece just to guide it but you want to keep your router from tipping and that is just a smooth Steady Hand you don’t want to be shoving down on it because then if you tip you know you’re really going to want to move the router will do the work if you’re taking small bites you can just move it and keep it going you want to use steady kind of light pressure then when you’re using a palm router uh you don’t want to hold it from the top for the same reason you’re going to get a lot of tipping so you’re going to hold it from the back all fixed bases are going to have an open area so you can see your bit and what’s going on uh and then a closed area which you can use your hand to guide it sometimes like I think maybe it’s only this DeWalt comes with a plastic base that comes out slightly that you can put your finger on to help you guide and keep the router stable especially when you’re doing sort of uh Edge profiling or if you were trying to do something like you know a rabbit on the inside of this box you Also may have an auxiliary base like this one that we sell which will have two handles same thing it’s going to be real easy to guide it uh you can hold it with one hand and maybe hold the back of your router which keeps it a lot more stable but those are the three ways to be really safe with your router and if you use those you’re going to be fine especially the small bites everything after that it shouldn’t kick you shouldn’t get Kickback if you’re taking small bites let’s talk about the different types of router bits and what they do all right so here are the three basic types of bits this is not to say these are all all of the types of router bits there’s tons of specialty bits out there but this is what you’re going to use 99% of the time until you get into some more obscure specialty parts of furniture making so we have straight bits these are spirals there are actually straight bits we’ll talk about those in a second we have Edge profiling bits so this is a chamfer bit which leaves a 45 degree Edge a roundover bit which does exactly what it says and a rabbiting bit this is going to leave you a Groove around an edge on the inside or outside of a box and these are pattern bits they’re going to trace something and cut out the material above or below based on where the bearing is located first type of bit is straight bit these are spirals they actually do come in a straight bit but I would not recommend using these they’re cheap they dull quickly and they create a ton of force spiral is a much better bit there’s three basic types there’s an upcut which is going to pull sawdust towards you it’s very much like a drill and great for doing through holes through mortises things like that the difference between an upcut and a down cut is the edge in which they leave a better finish a down cut is going to leave a better Edge closer to your router because it is pushing the fibers down an upcut is going to leave a better Edge on the bottom of your workpiece because it is pulling the fibers up you can get a little tear out in the top with an upcut bit uh but they work great in Hardwoods these are great for Hardwoods when it comes to plywood a compression bit is going to be your best bet because it has an upcut portion at the bottom of the bit usually a qu to a/ inch tall and the rest is down cut so when you get all the way through a piece of material it’s going to pull the bottom edge up and push the top Edge down and create a great profile all the way around these are great for cutting out material with templates and things like that this is the bit we use most often on the CNC because it leaves the best finish the next bit is Edge profiling bits so they come in a variety of shapes and sizes these are chamfer bits they leave a straight 45° Edge these are round overs do exactly what they say round over comes in a bunch of sizes from E inch all the way up to you know massive bits that are an inch big this is a rabbiting bit it’s designed for cating a rabbit on the inside or outside of a box or piece if you were doing the back of a cabinet or the top of a jewelry box that would be a great choice these are pattern bits they use a bearing to trace something like this this is a template it’s used for creating complex shape sort of like this and they are fantastic the one caveat to using these is you want to take as little material as possible because sometimes you’re doing a lot of depth you want to remove down to about an eighth to a 302 of material and that’s all you want to take with your router bit they come in straight and spiral all three of these are compression that’s the only ones I like to use but they do come in up and down cut as well as straight bits these are top bearing bits which means that the template is going to be on the bottom of your workpiece your router will be above this is a top bearing bit this means it’s going to be the template will be in between your router and the workpiece and we’ll trace it here and then this is a double bearing bit the bearings are removable and this would be for big thick pieces where you need to route from both sides of it or if you have a tough grain situation where you need to go in different directions to avoid having tear up so those are the three basic type of bits like I said there’s lots of other ones uh so let’s wrap this thing up like I said in the beginning routers are one of the most versatile Tools in your shop they have so many different accessories you can get so much done with them and it’s a great overview no BS look at actionable Intel that’ll help you use them safely in your shop I’m going to list a ton of in-depth resources we’ve already created about all these subjects down in the pincon description well as all the tools we talked about and a lot of blog posts we have that go into a lot of depth on this uh if you’d like to see more of the no BS series let me know down in the comments what you’d like to see next what subject should we cover and just get to the nitty-gritty up guys as always stay safe in the shop thanks for [Music] watching …

“+10,000 Step By Step Plans …even if you don’t have a large workshop or expensive tools!“ Download Today! 👈