# The Infinity Miter Lock Bits Arrived And They Do Work Well



## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

The Infinity Miter Lock Bits arrived and I got to try them out today. As expected by some member that are aware of my vision problem I did have to use my camera in order to see the marks on the jig to do the set up. See photos of the set up. These photos are the ones that I had to use to do the set up. The work pieces were not glued together when the photos were taken, the fit would probably be tighter if they had been clamped and glued. I little more practice will be needed to get the fit better, but for a start, I'm pretty happy with the bits and the way the jigs work. 

Jerry


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## Semipro (Mar 22, 2013)

Well Jerry you know what they say even a blind squirrel finds a acorn once a while, sure looks like you found yours nice job.


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

I did not mention that the biggest problem that I had with making the miter lock joint was that I had difficulty keeping from getting some snipe at the end of the cut due to the space between the split router fence. At this early stage I trust that a little practice might let me learn to keep the piece hard enough against the out feed end of the fence to not let the last couple of inches that are not supported, to be able to let the bit dig in deeper than it should. Wonder if anybody else has experienced this snipe. It might turn out that one needs to cut the pieces long enough to allow the snipe to just be cut off.

Jerry


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## BCK (Feb 23, 2014)

the setup piece will make all the difference, than bits that dont come with one..save alot of scrap tests...


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Jerry Bowen said:


> The Infinity Miter Lock Bits arrived and I got to try them out today. As expected by some member that are aware of my vision problem I did have to use my camera in order to see the marks on the jig to do the set up. See photos of the set up. These photos are the ones that I had to use to do the set up. The work pieces were not glued together when the photos were taken, the fit would probably be tighter if they had been clamped and glued. I little more practice will be needed to get the fit better, but for a start, I'm pretty happy with the bits and the way the jigs work.
> 
> Jerry


I don't know if you routed the wood the size as shown or if you cut it after routing, if it was as shown it would be essential to keep it pressed firmly against the out feed of the fence otherwise the tendency is for the end to press deeper into the bit. I'd like to see a shot that shows the table and fence, in other words taken from further back so that I may be able to see the setting up error causing that slight miss fit. In the first shot the jig appears to be a touch out with your centre line as if the fence needs to come a touch forward. In conclusion Jerry I have to tell you that for a first effort you have done remarkably well so go practice on some soft Pine.


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## Shortslvs (Jan 13, 2013)

I think it looks great for a first try. Can I ask what that little setup set you back and if your think it would work nicely for wider material, like cabinet boxes...? I am building tons of them and would like to improve the joint.


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

Shortslvs said:


> I think it looks great for a first try. Can I ask what that little setup set you back and if your think it would work nicely for wider material, like cabinet boxes...? I am building tons of them and would like to improve the joint.


Fred,
Keep in mind that I bought two bits and two jigs. The smaller one is for material from 3/8" to I think 3/4" and the other one is for matrial from 5/8th" to 1.25". A separate jig is required for each bit, I paid just under $200 for the whole Mary Ann. I suspect that there may well be some bits for less money, but from what I read about the Infinity bits I think that you should really look at them before making your choice.

One caution in regard to your set up, and it's embarrassing for me to admit what I did, maybe I can blame in on my vision, but that would be a stretch. Here is the tip, remember to take the jig off of the bit before making that first cut, duh. Fortunnately I found the jig after my boo boo and it was only slightly scratched, bet I won't do that again. also, the bit was not hurt and I began to breath again after checking it with very strong magnifier. Gosh I hate to admit how stupid that was on my part, but if my confession prevents somebody from doing what I did, it will off set my embarrassment.

Jerry


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## neville9999 (Jul 22, 2010)

Jerry I always use a sacrificial fence with Miter lock cutting, I would fix a strip of thinner material across the front of the fence and with this cutter then I would make that fence as thick as it could be so that the cutter still worked, start with the fence 'uncut' and then just ease the cutter through that so that only the cutting portion of the cutter sticks through the face of the fence so do that slowly so that you don't overheat the cutter and you will have such a clean fence to rest on that snipe will not happen, you do have to play about a bit with the cutter height and the fence with some trial cuts but once you get the setup perfect then you will get perfect interlocking miters. N


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## greenacres2 (Dec 23, 2011)

Jerry Bowen said:


> One caution in regard to your set up, and it's embarrassing for me to admit what I did, maybe I can blame in on my vision, but that would be a stretch. Here is the tip, remember to take the jig off of the bit before making that first cut, duh. Fortunnately I found the jig after my boo boo and it was only slightly scratched, bet I won't do that again. also, the bit was not hurt and I began to breath again after checking it with very strong magnifier. Gosh I hate to admit how stupid that was on my part, but if my confession prevents somebody from doing what I did, it will off set my embarrassment.
> 
> Jerry


Wow Jerry--that was a close call. Better the jig has a few scratches than you!! Could have been severe for sure.

earl


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

neville9999 said:


> Jerry I always use a sacrificial fence with Miter lock cutting, I would fix a strip of thinner material across the front of the fence and with this cutter then I would make that fence as thick as it could be so that the cutter still worked, start with the fence 'uncut' and then just ease the cutter through that so that only the cutting portion of the cutter sticks through the face of the fence so do that slowly so that you don't overheat the cutter and you will have such a clean fence to rest on that snipe will not happen, you do have to play about a bit with the cutter height and the fence with some trial cuts but once you get the setup perfect then you will get perfect interlocking miters. N


Neville,
That's a really great tip and I am going to give it a serious try. I am thinking that one should do a complete and perfect set up, make a trilal set of cuts and then when all is set correctly do what you said. that will indeed prevent the snipe. 

You are a wood working genius and coming from you to me is really appreciated, thanks Neville.


Jerrry


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

I'm with Neville on the zero clearance fence. Because of my simple tall fence it's easy to clamp a sheet of MDF and slowly slide the fence forward across the bit, after of course setting the height of the bit which only leaves the fence to be accurately adjusted.


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

Jerry Bowen said:


> Neville,
> That's a really great tip and I am going to give it a serious try. I am thinking that one should do a complete and perfect set up, make a trilal set of cuts and then when all is set correctly do what you said. that will indeed prevent the snipe.
> 
> You are a wood working genius and coming from you to me is really appreciated, thanks Neville.
> ...


I relize that only the height of the bit can be set up before making the cut through the  sacrificial fence. The fence setting depth will need to be adusted as the bit cuts through the fence, not before. Sure does sound good to me.

Jerry


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## TwoSkies57 (Feb 23, 2009)

There ya go Jerry... Neville tip is right on the money....I'm looking forward to your progress with this build!!!




neville9999 said:


> Jerry I always use a sacrificial fence with Miter lock cutting, I would fix a strip of thinner material across the front of the fence and with this cutter then I would make that fence as thick as it could be so that the cutter still worked, start with the fence 'uncut' and then just ease the cutter through that so that only the cutting portion of the cutter sticks through the face of the fence so do that slowly so that you don't overheat the cutter and you will have such a clean fence to rest on that snipe will not happen, you do have to play about a bit with the cutter height and the fence with some trial cuts but once you get the setup perfect then you will get perfect interlocking miters. N


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## Shortslvs (Jan 13, 2013)

I appreciate your openess and the only damage you've done by being open is make yourself appear as human as the rest of us


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

I tried womething new today in regard to setting up the miter lock bit. I first measured the thickness of the parts to be jointed, in this case the thickness was .790". Next I planed a piece of material to .380", half the thickness of the parts to be joined. This way I did not have to try to draw a center line to line up with the hash mark on the jig, just used edge of the .380" thick piece of material. See the photos for the set up and the results that I got using this concept.


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## Gaffboat (Mar 11, 2012)

Jerry Bowen said:


> I tried womething new today in regard to setting up the miter lock bit. I first measured the thickness of the parts to be jointed, in this case the thickness was .790". Next I planed a piece of material to .380", half the thickness of the parts to be joined. This way I did not have to try to draw a center line to line up with the hash mark on the jig, just used edge of the .380" thick piece of material. See the photos for the set up and the results that I got using this concept.


That sounds like a clever idea, Jerry. Makes me wish (once again) that I had a planer.


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Jerry Bowen said:


> I tried womething new today in regard to setting up the miter lock bit. I first measured the thickness of the parts to be jointed, in this case the thickness was .790". Next I planed a piece of material to .380", half the thickness of the parts to be joined. This way I did not have to try to draw a center line to line up with the hash mark on the jig, just used edge of the .380" thick piece of material. See the photos for the set up and the results that I got using this concept.


I assume that the maths is just a typo Jerry, method..for anyone vision impaired, excellent, result..you've cracked it Jerry!


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

harrysin said:


> I assume that the maths is just a typo Jerry, method..for anyone vision impaired, excellent, result..you've cracked it Jerry!


Harry, you are so kind to cover my error for me, but it was not a typo, it was an error on my part as I do my math in my head and I just screwed up that time. 

The results were not to bad, even with the error, but the concept seems to work better for me than to try to draw a line down the center of the board. The sharp edge of the board to use for the reference is more distinct and maybe a little more accurate even though it takes a little more time to plane the set up piece down to half the thickness of the stock that is to be joined.

Jerry


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

I wonder if we will see any difference if you make another using the correct thickness "jig".
As you know, I reckon that if it LOOKS right then it is right!


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

harrysin said:


> I wonder if we will see any difference if you make another using the correct thickness "jig".
> As you know, I reckon that if it LOOKS right then it is right!


Harry,
I think we will, when I zoomed in on the photo in Photoshop I could see the error, also the sharp and somewhat jagged edges of the knife edges were due to another mistake that I made. The workpieces were, as I noted, .790", the bit is the one for material from .375" to .750".

Also another thought in regard the issue of snipe. I've communicated to Reg about the issue after seeing his "small boxes" and he described the issue of the importance of the fence settings.

I remembere that after getting my Grizzly jointer that I had snipe and even when I phoned tech support for Grizzly the tech said that snipe was just part of using a jointer, I didn't buy that and after figuring out what caused the problem and made the adjustment for it I have never ever had anything even remotely resembled snipe with the jointer. 

I am now thinking that the same thing applies to the miter lock bits and while Neville has the best idea and I want to try it, I first want to see if I can adjust the fence properly and get rid of the error in that manner.

In case anybody doesn't know what I'm talking about, in regard to the adjustment, I'm assuming that the reader knows what snipe is so I won't go into that. But, what causes snipe with the miter lock bit I think is that when the rear end of the work piece clears the right hand half of the fence it is then only supported by the left hand half of the fence and if that half of the fence is just slightly set back to far the workpiece is allowed to dig in and create the snipe. Then there is another issue to watch for, if the left hand half of the split fence is to far forward, as you start to feed the workpiece into the bit, the workpiece will catch on the edge of the left hand half of the fence which will cause a problem so, the fence has to be exactly positioned to get the correct feed and no snipe. Right now this is only theory and will have to be experimented with to verify if I'm correct or not.

Jerry


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Such problems just do not arise with a simple, next to no cost tall fence like mine, KISS! Also remember that because we're working from a single point (the bit), it doesn't matter what the angle of the fence is.


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

harrysin said:


> Such problems just do not arise with a simple, next to no cost tall fence like mine, KISS! Also remember that because we're working from a single point (the bit), it doesn't matter what the angle of the fence is.



Harry,
Completely agree with you. This tall fence is going to be a must when doing end grain cuts on workpieces such as with the consructions of small boxes. I have not yet attempted to use the miter lock bit on end grain yet. The Wonder Fence from Incra has a high rise feature with it that is still in its package, I need to install it and see if it will work and if not will build one like you show in your photo.

I just have to go buy some lumber, I'm actually almost out of scrap to practice on. I have not been able to make 100 mile, one way, trip to Lubbock to buy lumber due to Vesta's back problems and recent issues in our family, maybe I will get to make the trip in few days.

Jerry


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

Had an interesting day working with the miter lock bit.

The first thing that I did was to use the Infinity set up jig to do a set up for half in stock. I did the set up using .250" thick material instead of drawing a line on a piece of half inch material. That works much better for me.

Next I made the cuts in two parts of half inch stock to be joined and they fit very well. 

I will keep these pieces to use in the future for setting up the bit for half inch stock. Once that is done I can raise or lower the bit, and move the fence either forward or rearward to compensate for any other thickness of stock up to .750" with the smaller of the two Infinity miter lock bits.

Next, I found some stock that was .428", I cut two parts for an experiment that I wanted to try to do with the thinner stock, as described above.

The difference between .500" and .428" is .072". Half of that is .036". I lowered the bit by that amount and brought the fence forward that same amount.

Made the cuts on both pieces of that thinner stock, the fit was perfect,

Guess I could sell the set up jig, won't need it any more unless I lose my set up blocks, guess I better keep them knowing me.

Jerry


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

The board on the router table did the trick, no more snipe. Just clamp the board to the router table creating a fence for the work piece that the left edge of the workpiece rides against, this stabilizes that final cut at the end so that the workpiece can't feed into the bit when it comes off of the in feed fence.

I am working on some information for a new post to the thread. Spent lots of time in the shop, studing how the lock miter works, I mean really understanding the math and/or configuration of the matching parts.

I really believe, or least hope, that I'll finally be able to just set the height of the bit and setting of the fence by simply starting from scratch, measureing the thickness of the workpieces and setting the height of the bit accordingly as well as the fence and the the cuts will be perfect on the first try. No, jigs, no set up blocks all done by pre termined math. At least that is the goal.

The board on the router table works for both cuts, thus no need for a tall fence.

Jerry


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## neville9999 (Jul 22, 2010)

harrysin said:


> I'm with Neville on the zero clearance fence. Because of my simple tall fence it's easy to clamp a sheet of MDF and slowly slide the fence forward across the bit, after of course setting the height of the bit which only leaves the fence to be accurately adjusted.


Harry that's absolutely correct and thanks for posting the nice photo as that is what I was talking about, I would normally do this cut with a spindle block and as the have a much larger diameter than a router cutter then the false fence works very well but router cutters also work fine, just get the setup correct with scrap wood and the do the work pieces. Jerry this works fine and with a router cutter then the false fence will have to be thinner but it still will work. N


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

Since this thread was started and I did some practice cut with the bits, all of this stuff about fences to prevent snipe has become history. I think that Harry concurs with me too, right Harry. The trick is, when the face of workpiece is flat on the router table, press down hard toward the table as the feed is fed across the fence, do not press hard against the fence, that is what causes the snipe, by holding the board down hard against the table it can't be pulled into the bit as the end leaves the in feed half of the fence. Do just the opposite when cutting the second workpiece with the face of the board against the fence. Press hard against the fence, and just enough downward pressure to keep the workpiece from riding up during the cut, press hard against the fence when coming off of the in feed half of the fence, this will not allow the board to snipe as it can't drop or get out of the line of the rest of the cut.

Works for me.

Jerry


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Spot on Jerry, as I told you, snipe is IMPOSSIBLE if pressure is kept on the out-feed side of the fence. A common question from members concerns snipe using the planer. My answer to that is, providing the machine is set up correctly as per the makers manual, then when inserting the wood, slightly raise the far end until it starts feeding. Similarly, before the wood exits the machine slightly raise the end. I learned to do this soon after getting my planer close to 15 years ago when I was getting snipe on almost every piece of wood. I've never had it since in spite of going through several pairs of double edged blades.


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## Jerry Bowen (Jun 25, 2011)

Jerry Bowen said:


> Since this thread was started and I did some practice cut with the bits, all of this stuff about fences to prevent snipe has become history. I think that Harry concurs with me too, right Harry. The trick is, when the face of workpiece is flat on the router table, press down hard toward the table as the feed is fed across the fence, do not press hard against the fence, that is what causes the snipe, by holding the board down hard against the table it can't be pulled into the bit as the end leaves the in feed half of the fence. Do just the opposite when cutting the second workpiece with the face of the board against the fence. Press hard against the fence, and just enough downward pressure to keep the workpiece from riding up during the cut, press hard against the fence when coming off of the in feed half of the fence, this will not allow the board to snipe as it can't drop or get out of the line of the rest of the cut.
> 
> Works for me.
> 
> Jerry



My Dewalt 535 planer must have come from the factory set up right, it has never offered to snipe, but when planning four foot boards 3/4" six inches wide I did have to support the leading end as the board was finishing the cut.

Jerry:nhl_checking:


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## paduke (Mar 28, 2010)

When using lock miter on end grain cuts I concur with everything concluded above. I used the bit making drawers for the kitchen. Since occasionally I still get snipe I sequenced my parts cutting. Start with board wider than needed cut stock to length. Mill the lock miter. Rip boards to width removing any snipe


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

Bill, using zero clearance opening for the bit and keeping pressure on the out-feed side snipe simply cannot happen. I have not only used lock mitre bits extensively but all manner of large profile bits and have never had snipe and there is nothing special about me, I'm only a keen experienced amateur.


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## paduke (Mar 28, 2010)

agreed harry but I ain't perfect and I need to complete the project not keep practising


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