Do Cheap Lock Miter Router Bits Actually Work?

I decided to try out a 45 degree lock miter router bit. And honestly, I'm not sure I would recommend it. The idea behind it is clever and it seems like an easy way to make perfect lock mitre joints at our small woodworking shops. But in practice, making it work with a cheap router bit is a real headache. What I didn’t expect is that each side of the joint has to be routed differently, one at 90 degrees to the other, which adds a layer of complexity. Even more so if you have a small router fence. Luckily, I built both a vertical-spindle and a horizontal-spindle router table, so I had the tools to give it a fair shot. While experimenting, a few problems stood out right away: On my homemade router table with a plywood surface, the wood doesn’t slide smoothly. That alone makes the job more frustrating than it should be. My push stick is something I cobbled together, and with it, it’s nearly impossible to stop the bit from lifting the back end of the board. Because of that, the cuts weren’t consistent. On a second attempt, I tried holding the boards down harder at the back, which kept them flatter but also made it much more difficult to feed the wood forward. A bigger fence and a better pusher would have helped with that issue. To make matters worse, the bit I used was a cheap one, and I was working with fairly hard wood. The combination meant the routing left burn marks on the wood. In the end, it was worth trying just to see how it would turn out using it to make a lock mitre joint, but I wouldn’t expect too much from these low-cost router bits. If you’re curious about the tools I used, you can see how I built my horizontal-spindle router table here:    • 🔥 Horizontal Axis Router Table DIY   And my vertical-spindle router table here (on my commentary-free channel):    • The Easiest Router Table to Make with an I...