 What direction do you push that router? Can you pass this test? Well, I would work here at Paul Carlson here, a small workshop guy. Working on softening the edges on my soft die-in and doing that, I'm going to use a trim router. And I've got a round over bit in it with a roller on it or a bearing to follow along. That would just give me a nice little softening of the edges. I thought this would be a good opportunity to do a little quiz for you and you can test your skills. Now, in doing this quiz, which is which direction do you push the router? There is no grain. This is plywood so you can take that out of the equation. I know some of you know too much. And if I said which direction would you push it, you'd have to ask me 10 questions first. Well, if plywood, there's no grain, I just want to know the basic direction that you would normally want to push the router. Get a piece of paper, get a pencil, and then write 1 through 7. And then, beside each one of those, put down an A or a B. So I give you a minute to go get your pencil and paper. Hopefully if you're in a workshop or you're near your computer, you've got that. So anyway, here's number one. I'm going to soften this bottom edge here. So my router bit is going to be going clockwise. Do I go A this direction, right to left on this particular item? Or do I go B left to right on that edge with my router in this orientation? Number two is this top rail here. So do I go A right to left? Or do I go B left to right on this top rail? Here's my spin and I'm dropping the router bit down on there. So that's number two. I think number three is up here. I'm doing the bottom of this top rail. And so here's a picture of the way the router blade is spinning. Now, do I go A right to left? Or do I go B left to right? Put that down on your paper. Number four. Number four is down here on this leg. So if I was going to take this router here and it's spinning this direction, do I go A right to left over the edge of that leg? Or do I go B left to right? Number five. Over here on this outside edge, my router placed like this. It's spinning this way. Do I go A, let's see. I think my A choice in this case is up. Do I go A up over here on number five? Or do I go B down? Got your answer? Number six. This opposite leg on the outside here. Router's spinning this way. Do I go A up? Or do I go B down? And then finally, on this very top rail, spinning this way. So this is number seven, I believe. Do I go A right to left? Or do I go B left to right? I'm going to put up a graphic now that's going to show all of those and you can finish your answers. Of course, pause the video on that graphic and take your time and then start up the video again. To get any value out of my videos, I appreciate you doing a like and a comment and a subscribe if you're not already subscribed and we'll try to offer more basic woodworking tips and techniques. And one last thing. The little Patreon link is available for you in my description. You can still make the top 10. You can still be one of my first 10. Well, depending on when you watch this, maybe if you watched it in 2023 I've got my 10 or 11 already. So anyway, Patreon link would be appreciated. Let's get to the answers. I'm going to link you to two things. PDF that you could just hit that will give you the answers and give you something you could take to the workshop for future reference if you don't already have it completely understood. And then the second thing I'm going to give you is a link to a Snuffy Nubs beautiful video about which way do you push the router and then he also handles when do you do time cutting and how do you handle grain. So very, very good router 101. For number one here, we're spinning this way. Always think about, well, with the way that it's spinning when that engages in that wood if I held it lightly, which way would it like to go? Well that chunk is going to hit that wood the edge of that router bit is going to hit that wood spinning that way and that's going to want to drive it this way. You always want to start over here sometimes you do a little edge finagling but you start over here and you go the opposite of the way the router would go unless you're purposely doing a time cut because of grain and that's a whole different issue. Number two, the top of this rail here, I'm spinning this way but this time this one went up and engaged this one's going to go down so when this one engages it's going to want to go this way and so I want to go this way from right to left so this was B, left to right, this was A, right to left number three I believe was up here when this blade's spinning this way and it engages just think about it, where would it want to go? It would want to go this way and so you want to go the other way so you want to do B which is go left to right so actually what you do is go left to right here and then what you do inside of a rectangle and you're reaching over and you got your bit on there you're going to go clockwise all the way around this number four is this leg well when I engage that router bit there it's going to be spinning to the right when the bit engages that wood and it's spinning to the right clockwise here it's going to want to go this way so the answer is I push against it and I go in this case A, right to left number five is over here when I put that router on there it's going this way it's going to hit that wood and it will want to go up so I want to go the opposite way and I want to go B well I gave you a choice of A is up and B is down so I want to go B for number five number six which is over here that router bit is going to want to go this way so think of it when it hits that wood what's it going to do it's going to drive itself down and then finally on the very top here when I engage spinning this way it would want to hit that wood and travel this way so I want to go against it and go B right to left so again look for the link to the answers and a little grid you can print out for the future and look at the Stumpy Nubs link he has a wonderful video on the topic small workshop guy hoping you'll be safe in your workshop we'll see you next video