Rabbet cutting router bit and rabbet or shoulder joint cut – Image courtesy of mullerconstructionsupply.com Edge Cutting Router Bits On its own, the router is useless, but coupled with the correct bit you can create a masterpiece! To these ends here is a run down of the most popular router bits and different shapes or mouldings they cut. Straight Cut Router Bits You can control the depth of the rabbet by adjusting the height of the bit. But if you need a different tongue length, you need a different bit. You can cut rabbets of any tongue length with a grooving bit without a bearing, but you need to use it with a jig to keep it on a straight line. You don’t need a jig with a rabbeting bit.

As the bit is also non-guided e.g. it does not feature a bearing it can also be used to great effect for hollowing out objects.The straight cutting router bit is arguably the most commonly used type of router bit. As the name suggests it’s used for cutting straight cuts with a flat base e.g. the channels at the side of drawers that the drawer bottom sits in and certain timber joints such as a lapped joint. The above bits are fairly common in terms of use, most joinery workshops will have them, but there are some router bits that are only used for specific jobs, these are normally referred to as specialist bits. To be fair, I've only really used my router for putting nice edges on right-angled pieces of wood, plus my latest attempt at a rabbet. What I would like to do, though, is (realising that I must bite the bullet for building some jig / sled type thing) build myself a crosscut sled so I bought some 18mm plywood last night, and some wood for the runners and some for the fences... I do my work in the garden so if the weather holds out I'll give a crosscut sled for the Bosch GTS 10 J a go later today...

Glue joint bits assist joining two pieces of material by creating identical, adjoining tongues on the edge of both pieces. The notched cuts create plenty of surface area for gluing and form a tight-fitting joint that holds the pieces together while they’re being clamped. They’re available in two varieties: standard and mitered. The standard glue joint joins squared edges, while the mitered bit is made with a 45-degree angle to join two mitered edges. Is it because most bits are sized for a US market and therefore the 1/2" is most widely used? But 19mm is pretty much 3/4"... I can't really seem to find router bits that go there... maybe I'm not looking hard enough? There are some specialised ones from the US "mega rabbet" it seems.You can cut dadoes, grooves and rabbets in many different ways. In this article, however, we’re going to show you a simple, foolproof cutting method that requires only a router, a pattern bit and two straight guides.

Due to the nature of a bearing and it’s very smooth rotation, this helps to avoid the router bit juddering or jumping around, keeping any cuts dead straight and accurate to the surface you are working on.If you are fairly keen on carpentry and joinery, the router is one of the best power tools you can have in your tools arsenal as it can be used for a huge variety of jobs from cutting hinge recesses, mitering worktops, trimming and shaping edges to cutting a whole variety of timber joints. A rabbet is a recess cut into the edge of a workpiece. The piece that extrudes is called the tongue. A rabbet joint is the result of joining a rabbet to another piece of wood, typically to construct shelving and cabinet boxes. Rabbet joints are great for building drawers, cabinets, and lighter items like a picture frame. They can be cut with a table saw, table mounted router, or hand held router with a rabbet bit or straight bit. When it comes to the business end of a router bit, the cutting edges or teeth, most bits these days should be made of at minimum high-speed steel (or HSS for short) but if you can always go with carbide-tipped bits. Not only is it used for cutting channels it can also be used for creating decorative effects in wooden panels such as doors, table edges and other similar objects.

Actually with a side fence and, say, a 20mm 2-flute straight cutter you could do straight rebate - the thing is you'd need to do it in incremental depth passes of 1 to 3mm (assuming in MDF or ply). This is at best tedious, but depending on the base you have in the router it may prove very difficult to get two cuts of the same depth. A rabbet is like a dado that’s missing a side. It’s essentially a notch cut into the edge of a board or piece of plywood. Is it because a trim router and a 1/4" bit would just find that too hard, even if I did multiple passes? As you may have guessed from the shape of the bit in the image below, the core cutting bit cuts channels and shapes with a concave bottom.

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As they effectively cut a 45° bevel edge, they are also commonly used to ‘bevel” the edges of two adjoining surfaces to create a mitre joint so that they meet to form a right angle.