Hi everyone,

I didn't use bead and cove, but I used my router to clean up the edges of my strips after cutting with a band saw with a straight bit. I cut quite accurately thus I had to remove only small amounts of material (<0.5mm). I fed the strips with the rotation to get a cleaner cut. With lots of feather board pressure I had not problems even with walnut strips. Disobaying the general rules, I also used the router as a planer to get uniform width and feeding with the cutter rotation. Staying behind the strip ensured that it would be shot away from me rather than at me. If you don't generate enough friction with the feather boards, it certainly becomes very dangerous.

Andreas

: One idea that I have heard from both Rob Macks and Joe Greenely is to feed
: the strips into the router table WITH the rotation of the bit rather than
: against it, which is common practice. I used this method on my current
: project and had far less splintering and other defects, on the order of
: 5%. Make liberal use of feather boards, both horizontal and vertical,
: clamped or otherwise fastened securely to the table. My shop-built feather
: boards have adjustment slots, the tables are set up with carriage bolts,
: and the nuts have big plastic wheels to allow easy one-hand adjustment and
: positive clamping.

: You are right to be picky about the strips at the front end of the project.
: If they aren't right, fairing and sanding will expose gaps that weren't
: visible at the stripping stage. Filling will take care of them, but it's
: better to have nice tight joints to start with, and that means uniform
: strips.