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- Guide to Joinery Bits
- Whiteside
A Whiteside Dovetail router bit is a great way to add the classic strength and style of tail and pin construction to your woodwork. The carbide tipped cutters have 2 carbide tipped flutes, are available to fit many dovetailing jigs fixtures and systems, including Incra.
Simply put, Joinery bits help you attach one piece of lumber to another with precision and repeatability.
Slotting cutters are used in panel construction of cabinet doors, are considered a joinery bit although they have many uses outside of joinery. They can be used to cut mortises for a tenon, tongue and groove, or biscuit. (For cabinetry bits, such as raised pannel or rail and stile sets, check out Cabinetry bits)
Dovetail Cutters are spec’d by angle and diameter as measured at the widest part of the bit. Many dovetail bits are designed specifically to work with one or another of the many router dovetailing systems on the market, including Incra, OmniJig, or Leigh. Check the Product spec table for compatibility.
Glue Joint router bits, and sets cut joinery ready to glue or otherwise fix into place. Variations include inline glue joints, 90 degree corner mitres, such as lock mitres and the drawer mitre. For production cabinetwork, or simply ease of assembly these bits take the cake.
Multiside bits are used to create 6 or 12 sided polygons with a simple birds mouth joint.
Tongue and Groove bits add simple sturdy construction to nearly any project. Some styles of bit cut both sides of the joint, others as a pair of matched bits.
Rabbet bits are typically used for creating a shoulder along the length of a board. A rabbeted joint beats a butt joint, bacon to biscuits, and speaking of biscuits...
Biscuits bits are designed to cut the slot for lenticuliar floating tenons, or biscuts. Because of the small size of the tenon, and the simple set up of the router, biscuits are great for projects that simply need a bit of extra strength, or a cup of get-up-and-go.
Mortises are typically cut with an up cutting spiral fluted straight bit (See Solid Carbide Spiral fluted bits) Also of interest to the mortise minded is the Whiteside Corner chisel, used for squaring the sides of a routered mortise (See Router Bit accessories)
For over 30 years Whiteside Machine Company has manufactured best quality router-bits and we are proud to offer an exceptionally wide selection of their catalog. Combine them with your Festool router, or router table and you have a professional quality solution not only for shaping, but for joinery, grooving, copying templates, and even making the kid a custom set of wooden train tracks.
Flag waving aside, the real reason to purchase a Whiteside router-bit is because the hands down top quality of their product. Their router bits feature innovations such as concave ground cutting edges, who's sole purpose is to improve product quality, not simplify a production process, or shave a few cents per bit in manufacturing cost. Whiteside is a company who would rather build their own proprietary machinery, than settle for what's available, and with over 200 years of collective experience in their grinding room alone, they have the chops to pull it off. What that means for your woodworking is not having to worry about endlessly sanding out machine marks. It means not having to worry that a pre-maturely dull bit will tear out the grain. It means you can push your bit through the wood with the confidence of knowing that the folks who made your router bit cared as much about their product, as you care about yours.
Whiteside Machine is a family owned and operated business based in Claremont, North Carolina.
Fine Wood Working had this to say about Whiteside in their May June 2007 Router-bit review: "At the end of the day, the Whiteside and the Eagle bits had risen to the top of the mix, tying for the highest score. Lee Valley had the second-highest score, followed by Southeast and Woodtek in a tie for third. By the way, Whiteside also had the best bit when we reviewed straight bits in our August 1999 issue (FWW #137). We named the Eagle and Whiteside bits best overall. And, since the Whiteside had one of the lowest prices of the top bits, we also named it best value."
