People who like to do woodworking must be familiar with carbide milling cutters. Carbide milling cutters are becoming more and more popular due to their high rigidity, good wear resistance, and long service life. Sharp edges make carpentry work easier. But there are also some very similar products among them, which make us very confused when using them because of their similar appearance and functions. This article will look at two of the more similar woodworking tools: the bottom cleaning cutter and the straight cutter.
What is a Bottom Cleaning Cutter?
Woodworking bottom cleaning cutter can be used for grooving, milling flat surfaces, and can also be used for tenoning. The blade of the bottom cleaning knife is relatively wide and suitable for fine trimming of large areas. The bottom cutting knife is mainly used to process shallow grooves, the depth of which is lower than the thickness of the plate.
Therefore, the bottom cleaning knife has higher requirements on the surface finish of the groove bottom than the double-edged straight knife. The bottom surface of the shallow groove needs to be smooth and burr-free, which eliminates the need for plate reprocessing and improves processing production efficiency. The size of the bottom cleaning knife can be selected according to the groove width and depth of the sheet to be processed.
The blade of the bottom cleaning knife protrudes downward a little, and has a certain undercutting ability, making it more convenient to mill closed grooves. However, because the downward cutting ability is not very strong, milling deep grooves often requires multiple milling passes.
But the bottom cleaner has another use: It can flatten wood with a simple jig, partially replacing the function of a planer. If you don’t have an electric planer or the electric planer is not good enough, you can try using a bed knife, which is a bit tiring and requires many milling times.
What is a Straight Cutter?
Straight milling cutters can be used to mill grooves of various widths, mill mortise and tenon joints, etc. They can also be used for straight tenon connections, finger joints, or panel connections with simple clamps. Straight milling cutters come in many sizes, with the most commonly used being 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch milling cutters. If you want to mill a slot wider than 1/2 inch, you can mill it twice. Slots between 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch can be milled twice with a 1/4 inch straight milling cutters.
The straight milling cutters are mainly used for cutting grooves or tongue grooves, the bottom knife is mainly used for repairing the bottom of the groove, and the trimming knife is mainly used for repairing the edge of the workpiece.
Straight Cutter vs. Bottom Cleaning Cutter:
To put it simply, it’s a bottom-level job and a side job. Undercutters generally use a blade length (shallow groove) that is lower than the thickness of the sheet to test the bottom and measure the surface to produce good results. Generally speaking, straight knives only have the cutting function of the bottom knife, which means that the side processing effect is good, but the bottom processing is not good, or even the bottom processing is impossible.
