Is plywood significantly harder on router bits than hardwood?


tcarswell

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Seems like an obvious question with all the glue and multi grain directions of plywood but I have found myself hesitating to use my nice router bits etc on plywood lately and I thought if I'm gonna be using ryobi router bits on plywood I should at least be certain my theory holds water. Thanks guys !

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All woodworking makes tools dull...  ;)

 

That said, good carbide bits and blades stand up to all of it for many uses.  Some solid woods can be abrasive, such as teak, Ipe, and dirty woods early in the process.  Many carbide router bits can be professionally resharpened for a few bucks. 

 

I think a lot of the worries are mainly left over from when a much higher percentage of tooling was high speed steel.  I don't worry about my carbide bits and blades, but I am careful about dried glue around HSS planer and jointer cutters.

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I try to keep my best bits away from plywood and MDF.  Sometimes it's unavoidable.  Barry is right about the HSS...when I was a noob I ran some edge-grain ply over my jointer...never made that mistake again.  Carbide bits seem to laugh at plywood, but HSS takes a beating.

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The biggest thing to do is keep your blades and bits clean. Frequent cleaning and a bit of bearing lube will help a lot. Resin builds up and adds to heat and dulling of the cutting edge. I just use a commercial blade cleaner and a plastic stiff brush, scrub, rinse , throughly dry . I also use Bostick blade spray, it helps reduce resin buildup.

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I've made both of those mistakes jointing plywood and of course planing jointing glue lines as well. Live and learn . So it sounds like using my cheap bits is just wrecking them a lot faster than my Freud bits as they don't stand up to the ply wood nearly as well. And I do occasionally work with ipe that stuff is a nightmare but it's my wife's favorite wood so she tortures me with it often :)
And Mr TIODS I learned that the hard way. Imagine my frustration buying a whole new set of (special plywood sized )straight bits to plow dado cuts with !!

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==>Is plywood significantly harder on router bits than hardwood?

In short, yes... A more careful answer -- it depends... 3/4" BB is certainly harder on edge tools than 5-ply lauan... As others have mentioned, a clean bit is a happy bit... Also mentioned above, I keep my better, hard to sharpen, etc bits away from engineered laminates.

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