Good router bit for use with a Sled (sledge?)

[BarbaraT]

it will be after the weekend now before Im free to get it all set up and will let you know how it goe

Hi Steve, How did you get on?

I've just bought a router sled, now looking at the range of bits for sale all for flattening?
Has anyone tried one of the bits where the inserts mount horizontally?

Are they worth the extra cost?
I'm not the biggest fan of sanding and have 7 kitchen doors to machine flat...

 

[Padster]

Bit late to the party, but if you look somewhere here there will be a thread where I made sled in order to flatten some slabs to make tables (tables should also be shown on a thread somewhere LOL)... anyway I've used it lots for this type of purpose and only have a trend T5 with 1/4" shank but I've used this bit from Amazon - works great hasn't needed replacing yet.... although I do have a spare as I misplaced it at some point before finding it again after ordering the replacement

HTH

Padster

 

[imageel]

I made a router sled to surface my American Maple workbench 760 x 2250mm using a pair of long levels as guides and one of these 35mm bottom trim cutters. I don't have any photos of the jig as it was back in 2011 but recollect I only had a 20mm guide bush to hand so had to fit the cutter after lowering the router head to near operating distance 1st - I seem to remember at one point near the end forgetting about this and generating a huge amount of sparks after releasing it as the router slowed down to a halt - no chips to the carbide cutters so still all good...!
In use it was not at all scary to control and it cut a maybe 2-3mm depth pass with ease - and only required a light scrape to get rid of the tramline marks -

 

[Stevekane]

Good morning Barbara and my appologies to everyone for not concluding my post, its so annoying when people ask things and then dont bother with followup or a conclusion. Following on from my post above I cleaned up the ebay router cutter and used it to very good effect. My Sled was a trougth made from CLS screwed to a ply base with a slot in its length, it sat on blocks of wood glued to a piece of mdf so that it formed a sort of bridge. I hot melted the timber onto the mdf between the blocks, laid the trough over it and ran the router in the trough back and forth. It all felt very safe because the router base was sitting down on the plywood between the lenghts of cls. The cheap ebay cutter worked very well, I try not to over stress them taking shallow cuts and I still have it now. If your doing multiple narrow bits its easy to clamp a number together and to do them all at once.
Steve.