Go Big Or Go Home – Mega Planer Router Bit!

 

Fine Woodworking review of the Infinity Cutting Tools Mega Dado and Planer Bit (52-506) by Nick Offerman

UPDATE! Check out what actor and woodworker Nick Offerman said about this router bit in Fine Woodworking No. 253 (April 2016).

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I love working on large projects like slab tables, big workbenches and even big cutting boards. All these projects have one thing in common, they require materials that are either too big, too heavy, or uncooperative to run through the average sized jointer or planer. 

That’s where the Infinity Tools Mega Dado & Planer Router Bit comes into play. It’s the perfect choice for flattening slabs with a planing jig or in a C.N.C. It’s designed to make quick work of cutting large joints like tenons, rabbets, and dados. It’s similarly ideal for surfacing an end-grain cutting board, you know, the kind we think will fit through the planer but are sure it wont come out the other side looking too good.

As the biggest member of the Dado & Planer bit family, you can see that this bit is ready to get the job done.

The Mega Dado & Planer Router Bit has several unique features that make it handle a large planning and jointing jobs with ease. First off, it’s big. With an impressive 2″ cutting diameter and a full 1″ cutter height, it’s perfect for big planing jobs and for making large tenons in projects like a Roubo bench build.

With a full 2″ cutting Diameter, 1″ cutter height and a 2+2 cutter design, this bit is ideal for everything from cutting tenons to surfacing large slabs.

Its exclusive two + two geometry means it has four extra thick micro-grain carbide cutters. Two of those cutters are set at an up-shear for getting tons of material up and out of the way, while the other two cutters are set at a down-shear to produce a super clean finish. This unique geometry also helps produce beautiful shoulders on tenons, dados, grooves, rabbets and even those breadboard ends. It just does not get much better than that.

Note how the unique geometry of our new Mega Dado Planer router bit produces beautiful shavings, inferior quality bits make saw dust.

We didn’t use 3mm micro-grain carbide cutters by chance. We chose them to give this workhorse the best life expectancy possible, and to insure the router bit could be sharpened multiple times.

2 + 2 cutter geometry with aggressive shear angles and extra thick carbide tips allow our new Mega Dado / Planer router bit to cut cleaner and for longer than the competition.

When it comes time to run this router bit there are a couple of guidelines I recommend following. First, don’t run this router bit in a hand held router, use it in a router table or a planing or scarfing jig. This is not the kind of bit you will be wanting to run freehand. Second, make sure to slow the router down. Most two inch diameter bits can be run at 16,000 max RPM, but due to the size and weight of this bit I find I get the best results when we run it down around 12,000 rpm.

Don’t forget to slow your router down, I find 12,000 rpm to be the sweet spot to get the cleanest cut.

So why did we make such a beast of a planer router bit? Simple, we had many customers asking us for this tool. It’s a bigger and better dado and planer router bit that is perfect for efficient stock removal on large projects. Next time a project comes along that requires some serious stock removal, the Mega Dado & Planer router bit is going to be up to the task of getting the job done right.