On 1/3/2014 2:34 PM, Len wrote:
I want for make a lot of 4 inch square blocks for the corners of door and window trim. I don't care for the typical rosettes you can buy in the big box stores. I want something a bit more unique for my house. I have a Milescraft router pattern maker and have chosen a daisy flower design that is about 3 1/2 inches in diameter. The blocks will be painted so I chose poplar for the wood. However, the cuts are not smooth and require a lot of work after the routing phase. I have tried going around the pattern twice in both the forward and reverse directions. All it seems to do is make the grooves a bit wider. The problem is that the rotary pattern requires some cuts with the grain and some across the grain. The latter are rough!

My last thought beside junking the idea is to go to a harder wood. Has anybody used this beast (Milescraft ..) with good success? Is there a hidden secret to it that I should know?

Len

It's not the jig. It's the wood. Like any wood, you can cut in one
direction and all is fine, cut in the other and you get tearout.

It's like rubbing a dog's coat one way, then rubbing the other one goes
with the grain one against.

The way to tame this problem is to take light cuts.
Sometimes climb cut routing will help.
Have sharp bits. A dull bit will never work.

If you have the above and are failing find wood that is fine grained.
Coarser wood tends to be more of a problem. Beach is a good example of
a wood that works well, so is bass wood.

If you want to continue with the poplar, and all else failed. Try
wetting the wood. Green wood cuts more easily, and so does wet wood.
Take cuts that leave you with more to do, then wet the wood for the
final passes. And see if the fibers are cut more easily.

That's about all I can recommend.


--
Jeff