I have owned a Makita router for nearly 20 years & used it recently for only the third time.
I had forgotten what a pain routers are to use hand held.
On this occasion I was routing to size 16mm Malteca panels in HMR particle board (new kitchen bench carcass construction)
I used a 20 mm deep two flute cutter, quality unknown but it seemed sharp.
Merely adjusting the cutter position in the router chuck proved difficult.
Next I re-discovered the difficulty of accurately clamping a straight edge guide, pencil marks are not accurate enough, I ended up using a 150 mm steel rule & attempting to set within a 0.5 mm tolerance.
G clamps work, but other types vibrate loose & whoooo another drift off the line.
I know now to go left to right but that alone was not immediately obvious.
Then after many attempts I discovered my router works best removing only about 2 mm of this material. This meant I had to carefully cut oversize by handsaw only 2 mm without causing the Malteca finish to chip (topside fine,underside some chips maybe were 2.5mm). I did try a table saw but the chipping was excessive.
I next noticed my edges were becoming a little dark, burning maybe, is the cutter now blunt?
Do I even have the right cutter should it be three or four flutes maybe?
I tarted up the cutting edges with my fine diamond hone which improved things for a while; how often can you do this, is there a resharpening service as with engineering tools?
I'm getting better & making now much less dust, & I have disciplined myself to start the router off the work, I gather soft starts are now available.
I hate routing & wish I had found easy access to a beginners list of Do'd & Dont's.
Maybe my experience will generate a few laughs, any comment welcomed.