: Last weekend I routed the bead and cove in my WR cedar strips. About 40% come
: out perfect, about 30% are fit for use and the other 30% I endded up
: trashing. I keep the strips grouped by the boards they came from and it
: seems that some of them simply won't machine without splintering. Mostly
: when working the cove, but quite a few splinter when machining the bead.
: I'm using a 1/4" router with matching bead a cove bits (about 1
: 1/2" diameter). When I run into a stubborn set of strips I've tried
: different speeds, turning the strips around and running various feed and
: router speeds but nothing seems to help. This is my second campaign of
: making strips.

: I also did some pine strips and got close to 100% yield.

: Any ideas for improving my cedar strips? What kind of yields are other people
: getting with cedar? If anyone has purchased strips, are they all perfect?

One idea that I have heard from both Rob Macks and Joe Greenely is to feed the strips into the router table WITH the rotation of the bit rather than against it, which is common practice. I used this method on my current project and had far less splintering and other defects, on the order of 5%. Make liberal use of feather boards, both horizontal and vertical, clamped or otherwise fastened securely to the table. My shop-built feather boards have adjustment slots, the tables are set up with carriage bolts, and the nuts have big plastic wheels to allow easy one-hand adjustment and positive clamping.

You are right to be picky about the strips at the front end of the project. If they aren't right, fairing and sanding will expose gaps that weren't visible at the stripping stage. Filling will take care of them, but it's better to have nice tight joints to start with, and that means uniform strips.