For appearance’s sake, the exposed edges of hardwood plywood are rarely left uncovered. And more often than not, the covering of choice is either veneer tape or solid-wood edging.

Both work fine, but they have drawbacks. Veneer tape is thin, which means you cannot chamfer or round over a corner. That’s not a problem with an applied solid-wood edging, if it’s thick enough, but it always ends up looking just like, well, like it’s applied.

Michael Burgess has developed a set of router bits that goes a long way toward eliminating these problems. The Burgess Edge System, designed to be used with any 3/4-in.-thick plywood, consists of two router bits with 1/2-in.-dia. shanks. One bit creates a cove on the edge of the plywood the other bit cuts a shape in a solid-wood strip that’s a mirror-image of the cove. The two parts fit snugly to create a nearly invisible glueline.

There are several benefits of such a system. Among them, the wood strip can be matched to the face of the plywood panel. For example, if the face of the plywood is plain sliced, or flatsawn, you can apply an edge with a quarter- or riftsawn grain pattern to produce the look of a solid board. Also, if the wood strip is left proud of the plywood edge, a slight chamfer or roundover can be added while still maintaining the solid-wood look.

Then, too, thanks to the rounded edges of the mating surfaces, the parts are self aligning when clamped. In addition, the added surface area of the rounded edges creates a stronger glue joint. It takes a bit of fussing to set up the bits to cut the proper width and then to get them set to the proper depth to leave the thin veneers intact. It would be an advantage to use two routers here, especially if the process is going to be repeated.

In short, the bits produced good results, although the set-up and trimming cuts were a bit fussy.

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