How to prevent router from grabbing board when doing face moulding?

Question

I'm creating a picture frame out of a piece of 1"x6" Oak. I have a router table, with my face moulding bit inserted. I am guiding the wood in from the right side toward the left side (the direction of feed indicated on the router table).

Unfortunately, the router bit keeps grabbing the wood, and force-pulling it through the bit, causing all kinds of problems (not the least of which is risk of injury, but it's also screwing up the cut). I'm somewhat inexperienced in routing, so I believe this to be a problem with the way I am doing things.

How can I prevent this from happening, so that I can get a clean face cut without endangering myself?

Answer 1

Router bits have to be carefully checked against the type of cut being created. For the general cut there is a correct feed direction and there is an incorrect direction. For some bits used in a certain way there is no ideal cut direction.

The general principal is that the work piece should be fed into the router bit so that the incoming wood is pushing against the direction of bit rotation. If you feed the wood into the bit in the same direction as the rotation of the bit the cutting edges will most assuredly grab into the wood and try to pull it along.

The picture below shows the concept for the proper direction doing an "outside" cut on the wood piece when looking down from the top of your router table.

If you are trying to do some other type of cut then you should post some pictures so we can make additional suggestions.

Answer 2

There could be a couple problems here.

One is that the router bit you are using is cheap or dulled from excessive use and isn't making a good cut. The other is that you might be trying to remove too much material from the oak at once.

Oak is a harder wood so if you need to make a deeper cut then you should do it in passes or remove the excess from the corner as much as you can. You should be able to find a more conservative bit that will make the end cut run a lot smoother on the table.