Replica back for Wartime Civlian Receiver

[Yorkie]

I always have to scratch my head a bit with which way is the router bit spinning and how does the work have to enter and finish. On the table this can often mean a rejig if I change sides.

Gary

Yes, it is confusing! With the router upside down in a router table, as you look down on the bit it's going anti-clockwise.

Routing external edges around a panel with a hand-held router is done by moving the router around the edge in an anti-clockwise direction, and internal edges (in a cut-out in a panel for example), in a clockwise direction. (For cutting slots, as in the back panel jigs or the comb joint jig, the direction doesn't matter). If you hold a router bit in your fingers (out of the router of course!) and twiddle it round to see how the cutting edges would present themselves to the timber when in the router, it helps make things clearer. The tool soon let's you know if you're going the wrong way. Important if you're routing the edges of a rectangular panel to do the end grain first, then the long grain, or you get grain tear-out at the end unless you use a sacrificial piece of timber at the end of the panel to support it as the router comes to the end of the end grain edge. But anyone who's used a router soon finds that out - hopfully on a piece of scrap!

As with just about every skill these days, you don't have to look far on youtube for helpful tips, and what pitfalls to avoid.