Router problem making drawers

[Bob Cooper]

The fact that it work well early on and then got worse makes me think the bit has dulled. Is it a high quality bit? You may want to use the table saw to hog out most of the material and then finish up on the router table.

[glenn bradley]

Lots of good info here. Anytime material is trapped between the cutter and the fence you can get "grab". Lighter cut depth of say, 1/16" per pass will minimize this by minimizing the amount of material available to the bit. Similar to climb-cutting, a greater amount of material control is required to do these cuts well. Taking less material per pass will make control effort less.

[James Jayko]

I would say this is a cut much better suited for a router table than a jig for handheld router. Clamping a dado jig to a narrow piece like a drawer side is not super simple, and it should be parallell too and same distance from edge for all drawers. Can be done of course but router table is superior for this.

You're definitely right here. I was thinking case sides. But I should have asked why would you rout them in the first place?

[Dan Hahr]

You say you are pushing from right to left but that would not allow the problem you are describing. It sounds like you have the fence on the left side or between you and the router bit.This is a very simple cut on a router and doable in a couple passes when set up properly. Even improperly, it would burn a little and be slower.Your statement about the piece slamming into the fence makes it apparent that it is not riding the fence to start with. If the bit was encountering too much resistance, it would push the board back into your hands when set up properly. I'd also think about making the stopped dados in the drawers only 1/4" deep. That's plenty of meat to hold the drawers up and much less sliding resistance.

Dan

[Tom Bender]

While a router is a reasonable choice for this, a table saw before assembly is better. Probably water under the bridge at this point.