Joining Router Bits Reviews

My only complaint (after practicing with the finger joint bit all afternoon) is the limited instructions that come with it. Safety advice only. You have to figure out yourself how to use this properly, but once done it makes tight joints.

First thing to know is that all cutter heads need to remain on spindle to have to nut engage the threads, cutters you don't need are placed above the wide top cutter and just "cut the air" above your workpiece.

I used it on a shaper with a mitre gauge. Was impossible to hold the workpiece tightly against gauge so I built a sacrificial fence (this also reduced chipping as the cutter exits the back side). First attempt was too deep a cut and bit pulled work free from my clamp AND knocked my mitre gauge off 90 degrees. This made next hour's worth of practice confusing as the cut was deeper on entering the wood than on exited. Getting the mitre gauge back to 90 degrees mitre solved this.

Cutter does indeed cut 5/16" deep as they say, so I started marking a 5/16" guideline on my workpiece and aligning this to the end of my fence; this allowed me to touch the collar bearing but also to clamp the workpiece to my fence. Pull the workpiece slowly thru as a lot of wood is being chopped if all or most of the cutter heads are used.

I had to adjust height of bit for mating halves. I measured from the side of the workpiece cut by the wide top cutter to where the last narrow cutter (one above collar bearing) ended. This distance became the height of the bottom cutting edge on the wide top cutter and it fits beautifully.

All in all a great product.

It cuts the slot, but you have to move the bit along the work to get the full width of the biscuit. This makes sense since biscuit routers have very large diameter bits (~6") and this bit is only about 2" in diameter.

I'm using it to cut repetitive slots on my router table on small pieces. I made a jig to hold the wood and some stop blocks and it works fine.