Chinese Cylcone Dust Collector Knock-Off

[audiofanaticz]

Your about ready to lose a finger or two...

First your using an aid to keep your hands away from the work piece which is great, only for you to make it useless by not only placing your fingers on the piece being cut multiple times, but placing them right in the path of the work piece. 
Once your bit starts to dull, it becomes dangerous and it will start biting the wood instead of cutting it, when it bits the wood its going to take the wood for a ride (similar to when you jam a table saw blade and it shoots the wood back out at you).

When ever that bit decides to bite, and it will do it with no real warning its going to take along a finger with it if you continue to hold the piece your cutting and not the template. Even the template tape could come lose and cause you to slip resulting in finger damage.

You need to rough cut first with a jig saw, or your going to kill your bit life by 50-75%. Rough cutting will eliminate most of the chipping and leave a smoother cut which is occurring partially due to the fact your overworking your bit and making it hot and dull.
When  you rough cut you want to make the rough cut no larger than half the router bits width (preferably slightly less) the smaller the better. If your using a 1/2 inch diameter bit then you want your roughly cut piece to be no larger than 1/4 inch of the finished size. If its a 1/4 inch diameter bit then you want the rough cut piece to be no larger than 1/8 inch of the finished size.

Having to cut larger than half the bits diameter is hard on the bit, having the bit cut its entire way through is just going full retard and causing heat and dulling.

Granted there are times that you need to do this, but honestly your handling techniques are no where near what they need to be to be routering a piece without rough cutting (especially when its not needed).

The wood is not real birch and its junk, a waste of money paying a premium price tag for nothing that is no better than basic plywood for half the cost, because that is what it is, plywood with a birch veneer.
The yellow lines are cheap plywood, the the thin layer outside the red lines are birch that is doing nothing but look pretty...

[moh.vze.com]

That was my first time on the Router Table and you brought up valid points that were not obvious for me.

" First your using an aid to keep your hands away from the work piece which is great, only for you to make it useless by not only placing your fingers on the piece being cut multiple times, but placing them right in the path of the work piece.  "

I get confused sometimes where my hand should be. I have two of those Aid things but I thought it would be better to use one Aid for pushing down on the template piece and my hand to move the work piece around.

In this screenshot I have my hands in front of the router Path. I'm guessing I should have had my Aid in the front and my hand behind?

 

" When ever that bit decides to bite, and it will do it with no real warning its going to take along a finger with it if you continue to hold the piece your cutting and not the template. "

I was confused at times if my hand should be on the template piece or the wood. I guess I'm suppose to hold the template piece while pushing down with the Aid Block to keep the tape from coming apart.

" Rough cutting will eliminate most of the chipping and leave a smoother cut which is occurring partially due to the fact your overworking your bit and making it hot and dull. "

I'll make a video of me using the Jigsaw also at a later time. I think I am doing it wrong because it chipped the hell out of my piece when I was on the Jigsaw.

" You need to rough cut first with a jig saw, or your going to kill your bit life by 50-75%. "

What's the lifespan on these Router Bits anyway (1 - For Average User  and 2- For a Beginner)? That Double Bearing Spiral Flush Trim but costed me almost $100.

 

" having the bit cut its entire way through is just going full retard and causing heat and dulling. "

Hmm.  When doing Flush Trim cutting you can't really do it in multiple passes though right?

 

" The wood is not real birch and its junk, a waste of money paying a premium price tag for nothing that is no better than basic plywood for half the cost, because that is what it is, plywood with a birch veneer. "

Can someone on this forum make a YouTube Tutorial Video on how to choose good wood at Home Depot for Car Audio Speaker Box building? What should we be inspecting when choosing good lumber at Home Depot?

Thanks again for the advice. This was my first time cutting any kind of wood in my life and I'm a total n00b at it.

 

[audiofanaticz]

Your hand should NEVER be on the material that is being cut, if your going to put your hand anywhere put it on the the piece that is being traced on the back side.

Its good practice to never re-position your hands when the bit is in contact with the wood, or at least keep one hand on it firmly when moving the other hand, but a couple times it looked like you had very little pressure on the piece when changing positions.

When your cutting a piece of wood your feed should go from right to left when your using the front side of the bit that is facing you, when your using the back side of the bit  your feed will be left to right (which you had correct), but try feeding material in reverse once and you'll be in for a ride.

If your going to use a push stick, its best to attach the push stick with template tape, I use the mobile solutions animal router shield for anything small that maybe dangerous to cut, but you could buy a half inch piece of plexi and screw 2 handles on to it and make your own fairly cheap, it just wont be adjustable like the animal.

You are correct you cant make multiple passes with a flush trim bit to put less strain on the bit, but you can trace the pattern first and rough cut with a jig saw to reduce the bulk. 
Id also try to figure out some way to anchor that router table down so its not moving when you put pressure on the piece. Even if you bolt the legs to a larger piece of wood that is large enough to stand on so the router table wont shimmy or push away from you when its being used.

I made some videos years ago that got fairly long about wood, always wanted to do further testing on them but never did.
Your not typically going to find a true pure 13ply baltic birch wood at a big box store and will have to go to an actual lumber yard and possibly special order it, typically a 4by8 sheet is around $80 and a 5by5 sheet is around $60.
That stuff that they sell at big box stores that claims to be maple, birch, cherry, etc is all the same cheap plywood for $20 with a thin veneer top/bottom layer. If you carpeting or painting said wood and staining it to show off the wood grain there is no real point to spend the additional money on it.
People says its lighter weight than mdf, but thats only because its plywood usually made out of a softer wood such as Doglas Fir, softer woods are lighter in weight. Where as Baltic Birch is a hard wood and very dense and heavy, per 4by8 sheet its only a couple pounds lighter than mdf.