Pros and cons of climb milling in wood

[Ger21]

Generally, conventional cutting will almost always give a better quality cut than climb cutting, but there are exceptions.

The most important factor when cutting wood is preventing tearout.

To avoid tearout with conventional cutting, you need to make sure there is always some wood on both sides of the bit. Say you use a 6mm bit to remove 3mm from the edge of the board. With conventional cutting, the tool is pulling the wood towards the edge, which will result in splintering. So any time I cut rebates, I always climb cut. It gets more complicated when going across the grain, though, as both climb and convention cuts can result in tearout at the end of the part. If possible, I use the method in the third pic for crossgrain rebates.

For best results when cutting a proile, conventional cut and always have more material than the tool diameter outside the profile to eliminate tearout. Attempting to trim 3 sides of a board will almost alway result in one chipped corner, whether climb or conventional cutting. Climb cutting will chip at the start of the cut, and conventional at the end of the cut.