I made a few test carves today with my new X Carve and was quite happy with the results overall. Of course, I am now wanting to do a more complicated carve, specifically this one:
Will the plunge bit in the pic above, along with the slight adjustments I made to Feed, Plunge and pass rate be acceptable? I’d imagine I’d also want to bump the speed up a little on the DeWalt 611 to account for this change no?
Anyways, I’m hoping using this larger bit for roughing will knock a little off carving time?
I appreciate y’all’s insight into this.
Thanks!
I know there are some carvers that successfully use this type of bit. Personally, I don’t see them as a true plunge bit because the cutting edge does not run totally across the bottom of the bit. It is actually cutting a circle leaving the center in tact. This does only come into play on the initial plunge. Once horizontal movement is made it cuts off the center of the circle and then functions as a normal bit.
BUT - it still should work reasonable well as long as you don’t get real aggressive with the depth of cut on each pass. Personally I wouldn’t cut much deeper than the difference between the edge of the carbide and the solid body at first. But the softer the wood the more you can probably push things. Just experiment a little on some scrap and you will see what works.
As to the router speed - most all carving in wood with the X-Carve works well with the rpm’s set as low as possible. You should use the “1” setting. Normally, that is actually too fast but the best we can do easily.
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