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Does anybody know where to get the best router bits with 60 and 45 degree configurations for rough milling cane? I was entertaining the thought of building a finish mill, but I have come to the conclusion that with the time and money that it would take to get to where I would want to be I could probably buy an awesome lathe,  truck load of cane and hand plane about 100 rods. So, maybe I can slap together a rough straight tapering mill based on a router and get to the business of building rods.  (Eamon Lee)

Make your carrier (form) with a 60 degree groove and use a 1/2" straight router bit.  Cheaper and easier to maintain angles, I think.  (Brian Creek)

Check at your local hardware or Home Depot. I bought a 60 degree bit with two flutes and a straight carbide bit with three flutes. I made a jig that screws into my router table in the screw holes that are there for the router fence, just a piece of 3/4 wood (I used oak) that was 12" x 12". Cut a hole large enough for your 3 fluted bit to come up through. (1")  I took some of that white cutting board material, because it's sort of naturally lubricated, smooth, and put three grooves in it with the 60 degree bit. One shallow and the others progressively larger. I backed it with a piece of oak, 3/4 x 2 x 6. I screwed that down onto the 12" x 12" so the grooves are facing the bit.  One screw holds the guide fast, Make the screw hole at the other end so you can slide the guide closer to or further away from the fence you made. Then I made two hold downs, one on the infeed and one on the out, that are held against the fence with springs, that holds the strip against the fence. Very simple to make and inexpensive, and best of all, it works great.  (Ken Gaucher)

I have a 12" Portable Power Plane. Running the strips pith side up makes them all the same thickness. Make the thickness slightly more than the target dimension of your strips.

Make a light weight wood adjustable, 5" centers, starter angle form, 30°-52° starter groove on one side and 60° groove on the other side. Make the form length to suit your needs. Needless to say, make the from thickness large enough so you will not plane the adjusting bolts. If this happens, it will not enhance your day.

Adjust the Power Plane to feed the form but not plane it.

Run the form and all the strips through the Power Plane on the starter side. Turn the form over to the 60° side and run all the strips through for the second pass. Best power feed beveler I've ever used!  (Don Schneider)

So are you saying that you can do this in 1 pass on each side?   Seems like that is a lot of material to hog off, even if your strips are close to size to begin with.  (Frank Stetzer, Hexrod, Taper Archive, Rodmakers Archive)

Yes, you can do the job in one pass per side when using the starter form and it is a one person operation.

The key to doing this is planing the thickness of the strips just slightly thicker than your target dimension of the roughed strips before using the starter form. Naturally the strips have to be split to reasonable width.

Adjust the starter side depth so the enamel side of the strip is protruding above the form and the pith side is extending to but not beyond the slope of the groove. Don't worry about hogging out to much on one pass, the PP goes through bamboo like butter. The power feed rollers will force the strip down into the groove and hold the strip securely. Result- 60° angle on 1st pass. Feed the rest of the strips.

Turn the form over to the 60° groove side and don't adjust anything. Feed a test strip. If the planed strip is to large, close up the groove, DO NOT adjust the planer or you may plane your form.  When satisfied, feed the rest of the strips one at a time. Result - 60° rough beveled strips.

I don't have any pictures or drawings of the adjustable starter form but will make some if you wish. Contact me off list. The cross section of the form  looks just like the starter form in Wayne's book but it is adjustable with push/pull bolts.

Tip:

If you have used a Power Planer before you understand the term "Nipping".  This may occur for the first 4 or 5 inches of the stock when being feed into the planer. Position your strips back from the feed end of the starter form accordingly.  (Don Schneider)

Sounds to me like you could do tapered strips with a setup like this. If you do them slightly over size, wouldn't take much to finish 'em off in a form on the bench. Thinking this would work for the butt section but wondering how doing tips would fare.  (Bill Walters)

I think you are correct, haven't tried it yet but it is on my list of things to do. I do think it would have to be done in two passes so the power fibers would be centered/paralleled, ( is that the correct term?), in the strip. You could do it in one pass and come out with the right dimensions but the power fibers would not be parallel to the strip.

I think the tips would fare just fine once they are under both feed rolls because the power feed rolls force the strip down into the form and holds them securely. However, if the pressure of the first feed roll caused the tip strip to raise up before getting to the blade... its all over, toothpicks. Don't know how it would work feeding tip sections butt first, I'm guessing tearout.  (Don Schneider)

Bet it would work for tapering of tips if you built a shallow box that had the top routed out for the form to fit in, with holes underneath and a port at the end to attach a shop vac to, thereby drawing a vacuum on the form. Would just have to set it up so the hose wouldn't be able to come in contact with the knives and shut off the planner as soon at the back of the form cleared the inside of the power planer, disconnect the shop vac, bring the jig back around the front and start again.

I've been wondering why someone doesn't come up with a simple powered version of the adjustable planing form without using a whole lot of expensive or time consuming equipment to build a mill with.  (Bill Walters)

I used Adam Vigil's beveler plans to make mine and had to make a few minor changes. A few questions have arisen. I used a 3/8" router bit, should I be using a larger bit? To accommodate the wheels I'm using for holddowns I had to route a shallow square groove into the top of the V groove, spanning the distance of the contact for the wheels, this allows the wheels to go deeper into the groove, gives a square or almost square corner that the strip can catch on but I've knocked of the edge as well as pointing the strips seems to take care of this. (I am going to search out different wheels to see if I can change this) The question is, could this be contributing to an uneven bite on the strip? Also, I'm going with the feed direction in his instructions, facing the machine the bit is rotating counterclockwise and I'm feeding the strip from the left. Why should this work since, when routing wood you typically go in the opposite direction to get a smooth cut? How much straightening should be done before using the beveler? (Bill Walters)

I used a 3/8" router bit, should I be using a larger bit?

I used a 3/8 bit too.

The question is, could this be contributing to an uneven bite on the strip?

I found that my V-block was out of square to the router shank (or vice versa) when I was getting uneven strips.

Also, I'm going with the feed direction in his instructions, facing the machine the bit is rotating counterclockwise and I'm feeding the strip from the left.

It's called a climb cut. When done properly it should give you a BETTER cut and help prevent chipout. Make sure your holddowns are firm or you could be looking at a 5'x1/4" splinter in your gut.

How much straightening  should  be done before using the beveler?

I tried to get them as straight as possible. I found it was more important to get the nodes flat, otherwise the strip would push up into the cutter when riding on a node and the bit would take a deeper cut at the node. That gave me headaches when finish planing.

This has been my experience. I'm not an expert. My limited experience is all I've got, but you're welcome to all of it. (Eamon Lee)

Several have suggested building a Beveler using a router and a special bit. Does anyone have plans for building one of these and what type of bit? (Jimi Genzling)

If you're going to build a router-based beveler a straight bit works just fine. And, if you're using a 1/4" shank I would go with a 1/2" or bigger bit. Depends on how you design it, just be sure that the holddowns are close to the bit but won't get fed into it.  (Bill Walters)

I made my hold downs out of brass, just in case.  I don't think they would do much damage to a carbide bit, but they are also far enough away to miss it anyway.  (Neil Savage)

Brass hold downs will damage your carbide cutters (ask me how I know :-}) Carbide is brittle and you will find a big chunk missing from your cutter's edge not to mention the damage to your hold down and the need to go change your underwear afterwards.  (Dennis Higham)

I have plans to build a beveler here. If you have any questions ask.  (Adam Vigil)

I bought a roughing beveler form and am putting a router in it. It was suggested to me to use a double fluted bit, which I still need to purchase. I have an old Rockwell Router that fits a 1/4 bit shank. I think I might need to get a Collet to fit a 1/2 bit shank. The 60° beveling channel looks like it is suitable for butts, but would cut a pretty large tip. I have not used the beveller yet (obviously).  It looks like a Medved style beveller and has spring adjusted hold downs for the strips. This might sound silly, but it seems to me that the router bit is probably going to cut into the top of the 60° channel, how do you determine what depth to set the bit here as you run the strips through? Are the rough out beveled tip and butt strips similar in diameter?  (Keith Clinton)

If your beveler is like mine (a Medved style) I adjust strip height by moving the channel up or down.  I try to get both tips and butts .030 minimum above the largest final taper measurement of the section and then remove the rest by hand.  I'd rather have a bit more time planing than waste cane after I've already invested some time in it.  (Jon Babulic)

I'm getting back into the swing of things and have started building a roughing beveler. I'm looking for a source for a 60 degree cutter head that cuts on both sides. It would need to fit in a router for the power source.  (Bill Tagye)

As far as I know, if you look on Bellinger's web site, they do sell they're 60 degree cutter.  (Dave LeClair)

Call Forrest Maxwell and tell him I sent you. He makes a great one with replaceable carbide cutters it is much better than the Amana or Bellinger. 1-503-585-6667, he is located in Salem Oregon.  (Gary Nicholson)

I second what Gary says. Forest is a wealth of information and I am sure you can give you some pointers as well. Well worth the money and the replaceable carbide inserts ensure that you will never have to send it out for resharpening and they are much cheaper (and accurate) than a sharpening service.  (Scott Bearden)

I got tired of planing so on Saturday my buddy and I cobbled together one of these router powered bevelers. Now I need to order a straight bit to go into this bugger. My router is 1 1/2 hp with 1/4” collet. The structure is made out of 3/4” plywood and the 60 degree slot bed is 2” wide. So given these dimensions I figure I need a bit a little over 2 ½” long with a 1/4” shat and a dual flute carbide cutter section. Question is what diameter should the cutter section be — 3/8”, 1/2”, 3/4”?  (Larry Puckett)

Having built a beveler myself, I would say you want the largest diameter one. As the diameter goes up the cutting action becomes more like a plane. Some further suggestions -- put a speed control on the router -- full speed may not give you the best cutting action. There is a lot of vibration in my beveler so I found using nylon insert nuts and a liberal amount of Loctite blue holds it together better.  (Mike McGuire)

I use a router based roughing beveler and the collet is 1/2". The bit I use is also 1/2". I do believe, and some out there should correct me if I am wrong, that you could use any of the sizes that you mentioned. You will be setting your depth of cut by raising or lowering the 60 degree slot bed into the router bit.  (Bill Bixler)

Has anyone tried using the Rockler 30-degree double cut router bit (item 34399) in a roughing mill? (Steve Krumpos)

I haven't but I think it could work if you were able to remove the inner bushing so that both cutters were flush to each other.  (Greg Reeves)

No I haven't, but I was immediately interested so I did a search.

Are you mistaking a 30-degree bit for a 60-degree bit, or if not then do you visualize a way to put these to use? Looking at the picture in the link I'm seeing the 30 degrees being measured the wrong way but I'm not sure what they call 30 and what they call 60. (Don Ginter)

My mistake. On blowing up the picture of the bit even further I see now that indeed there are two 30 degree bits that can probably be put together to give the required 60. Providing that last washer can be removed and they can be put together. This is something that apparently not been available for any other bit maker up to now. Or, perhaps it has been available and nobody thought of putting two bits together on one arbour??  (Don Ginter)

I believe that there were similar cutters available from Amana.  (Scott Grady)

I took a look at the Rockler web page and saw that there was an option to ask a question about the item. I asked whether all the spacers could be removed to cut a sharp 60 or 90-degree angle on an edge. I am waiting for a reply. I will report when I get one.   (Mike McGuire)

With those bits you end up with an "included" angle of 60 or 90 degrees, using the two sides one of which is ground to 30 degrees and the other is ground to 45 degrees.  Only problem I see with that bit is that it's designed to work with stock that's a minimum of 3/4".  That bit looks like it requires a bearing between the two cutters.  (Mark Wendt)

Here's what Rockler sent me after I asked about using said bit sans center bearing:

Hi Bob,

You 'd be able to stack the bearings, cutters and washers of this bit is any configuration. Keep in mind though that if you don't have a bearing it the center you'll have nothing for the edge of the material to ride against so you would need to be using your router table fence to guide it.

Steve

Technical Support/Product Information
Rockler Woodworking and Hardware   (Bob Brockett)

Good work Bob. Sounds like it's a go then for somebody who wants to drop 80 bucks. And I'll just add here now without starting a different discussion. My beveller is a single 1/2' router bit that works well enough for rough strips and no taper. But it does tend to tear out chunks once in a while and so I dare not go any closer than about 30 thou to finish size. I'm wondering if this kind of cutter head will eliminate that kind of problem. Or is the problem something else such as router speed, hold downs, feed direction, etc?  (Don Ginter)

Could be any, or all of the above.  Or it could be something like a dull cutter.  Got any pictures of your beveler?  Maybe you could post them somewhere and we could take a look and maybe come up with an idear or two to fix the chunking.  (Mark Wendt)

The Rockler looks just like the Amana 49730. I think a lot of people have used that one before.  (Kurt Wolko)

I use a very similar Amana bit for roughing and they are ok.  The mandrill that comes with the router bit (and the Amana looks almost exactly alike) is very long.  In order to use it you need to put the bearings and spacers on the outside so the blades meet.  The blades are 30 deg on one side and 45 deg on the other so when they are combined you get a 60 deg or 90 deg cut.  The problem with these bits is vibration and the long shaft potentially makes this worse.  In operation I use a shorter shaft that came with Bellinger 60 deg cutters; they work ok, and are adequate for roughing. The good thing about these cutters is that they will rough both quads and hex rods.  The Bellinger 60 deg cutters are similar but are better balanced and cut smoother. (Ray Taylor)