Your post is timely as I just spent the day milling my own strips. First time for me so I'm learning as I go along.

I also had some splintering on the cove cut, but I convinced myself that it shouldn't be a problem as the outside will be sanded off anyway and the inside will not be visible. In fact I've convinced myself that the cove edge on the inside needs to be a little shorter to facilitate proper mating of strips where the station profile is convex. Am I just kidding myself?

Also, unlike Charlie, I have my (homemade) router table set up so that the bit rotates in the direction that pulls the strip through the table. This was the recommendation from the One Ocean Kayak instruction manual. Charlie's post has me wondering what the consensus is on feed direction vs. bit rotation.

cheers

Les

: I just finished cutting the coves on my strips. I ended up with some
: splintering of the edge in a few locations on most of the strips. My
: strips were a little thicker than normal, around .280 inches and I cut the
: cove so as to have a minimum .012 inch thick edge on each side of the
: cove. The splintering seemed to be a function of the cedar itself (grain
: run out) rather than a setup or technique problem such as feed speed etc.
: I tried climb cutting one strip but the thing got away from me and ended
: up 80 feet away in the neighbors flower garden.

: In the future, how do I minimize splintering of the edges when I mill my
: coves?

: Ken AKA "Kenny Too Slow"