Woodworking Tricks You'll Actually Use || Table Saw How To

This video was sponsored by Ritual. It's a new year, and that means another tips and tricks video. And this one, it's all about the table saw. So listen up, because you might learn something, or you just might get a good review and keep your fingers. So, if you're not doing so, subscribe down below. Go follow me on Instagram. If you're an old person, go over to Facebook and do that whole weird Facebook thing, and check out my website for plans, t-shirts, hats, stickers, motivational posters. Anyways, on with the video. Let's start off with a few quick safety tips. If you haven't used a table saw before, or maybe you just forgot to be safe, these will be helpful. Number one, table saws are loud. You're going to want to use hearing protection. Now, I get bored in the shop. Believe it or not, I'm a little ADD. So I like to listen to books on tape, podcasts, that sort of thing. So I like these ISO Tunes Bluetooth ear protection. They protect your ears, and you can still listen to music. I'll leave a link to these in the video description. Safety glasses. Now, some people don't want to wear safety glasses because they want to look cool and blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, knock it off, you pansy! Safety glasses are super important so you don't lose your eyeballs. And you can still look cool, like with these ones. They make you just look like a doofus hipster. I kind of am a doofus hipster. They've got the side protection here, nice and thick. I'll also leave a link to these. They're great. If you're shopping for a table saw, make sure that you're getting one with a riving knife. Now, a riving knife is just this piece of steel that sits directly behind the blade. Now, it's the same thickness as the blade, so it doesn't interfere with your cut. What it does do is, once your piece gets beyond the blade, it keeps your piece from being able to be turned towards the blade, causing kickback. This is probably single-handedly the best invention on a table saw, other than the saw stop that won't cut your fingers off. So, always make sure you've got a riving knife in there. It's very important for the fingers. When the table saw blade's running, don't touch it. I will now show you what that would look like using my own hand. I'm just kidding, that wasn't my real hand. But don't do that, it'd hurt. I could literally make this entire video about table saw safety. I mean, there's a lot of things to know and not to know. So if you've never used a table saw before, I recommend looking up another video that's specifically about safety and really knowing all the rules, the do's, the don'ts, before you start using the table saw. But that's not what this video's about. So let's jump into some of the fun stuff. One of the simplest and easiest jigs to make on the table saw is a tapering jig. I don't know why more people don't just throw one of these together, because they're super handy for cutting things not on a perfectly straight line. So I'm going to show you how you can make your own, and all you're going to need is a few of these Rockler hold-down clamps, and a scrap piece of plywood. Let's go. Now yes, there are much fancier versions of this jig out there with doohickeys and whatchamacallits, but this is just the easiest, simplest way to make it, and it works great. You start by taking your scrap piece of ply, flipping it upside down, and using a one-inch Forstner bit, you're going to countersink just a bunch of random holes in the bottom. Really, completely random. I just put a ton in there, so I have a lot of different options. Next, in the center of each one of those countersunk holes, you're going to take a drill bit that's the same diameter as the bolt that corresponds with those hold-down clamps, and you're going to drill all the way through. Don't worry about tear-out or any of that. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be pretty. It's just got to work. Next, taking the bolt from that hold-down clamp, you slide it in from the bottom. See how it's nicely countersunk in there, so it won't stick out and drag on the table saw. Then you flip it over, and you attach all the components of your hold-down clamp in place, just like so. Then you just grab whatever piece you want to cut at a taper, and you stick it in there and clamp it down. If you need to cut a bigger piece, well, you can make a bigger jig. If you need to cut a skinnier piece, well, that's why you drill a zillion holes in the bottom, so you can move those clamps anywhere you need them to hold that piece of wood nice and securely. With your piece of wood clamped down and ready to rumble, next you're going to move your table saw fence over so that the distance between your fence and the blade is exactly the same as the width of that piece of scrap ply on your jig. Then you're just going to run your jig and clamp down a piece of wood through the saw, cutting a nice, perfect taper at whatever angle you want. Well there you have it. In literally two minutes, I was able to throw together this fully functioning tapering jig that honestly works great. All you have to do is lock your piece in there, and you can cut it at a nice angle of your choosing. The other great thing about this jig is it's multifunctional. Let's say you don't have a jointer and you really need to get a straight edge on a piece of rough milled lumber. Well, all you have to do is take the rough side, line it up on the edge of your jig, clamp it down, run it through your table saw, and boom. You got a nice, clean, straight edge because it's going off of that straight edge guide of the plywood. You can use this for a lot of different things. There's two. Hopefully that helps. Let's go on to something else. Do you have a perfect diet day in and day out? Yeah, me neither. 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Now let's get back to the video. I wouldn't do this. Let's talk about cove cutting. Now cove cutting is a cut on the table saw where you're actually using the profile of the blade to cut a cove into a piece of wood. This is one of the easiest cuts to do on the table saw. Really, I'm not joking. It's not hard at all. But some people are very intimidated by this because you're having to use the table saw in kind of an untraditional, unconventional way. Now there's a right way to do a cove cut and there's an extremely wrong, dangerous way to do a cove cut. So I'm going to show you how to do cove cuts, do them right, and do them in about five minutes. Let's go. Now to get that profile of the blade shape cut into a cove on our piece, what we're going to have to do is actually not run the board in straight parallel with the blade. We're going to have to run it in at a slight angle to the blade so that we can mimic that profile shape of the blade, which means we can't use our normal fence. We have to use an auxiliary fence that's at an angle to the blade. Now for this, all you're going to need is a scrap piece of plywood. I'm actually going to use the tapering jig that I just made because you just need a straight edge. Now what I like to do is I like to pin one corner against my existing fence because I know that's not going to go anywhere. So I pin that there, and then because I have this old crappy outfeed table that I don't care about, I just send a couple of screws right into the outfeed table, just like that. Now I know this thing is nice and firm, can't go anywhere. Now if you don't have an old crappy outfeed table, then you can just clamp it onto the back of your table saw or figure out another way to hold this down. But you just need it secured at one end, secured at the other end, so it can't move. It's alright if it slides this way a little bit because all the pressure is going that way. So I actually had to take this back off for a second because I forgot a very important step. I know I talked about riving knives being very important for safety, but in a cove cut, you don't want the riving knife on there. You want just the blade cutting. If the riving knife's on there, your cove cut's not going to work because your board is just going to smash into that riving knife and it's not going to go anywhere. So before you get started, make sure if you have a riving knife, you take it off your saw. Now the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to do cove cuts is they try and cut too much off at once. The name of the game here is tiny little passes, just removing the smallest amount of material with each pass. The reason being is the only reason this is going to work is if you're just using the teeth of the saw blade to make the cut. If you have it up too high where the wood's actually coming in contact with the metal base part of the saw blade and not just the teeth, it's not going to cut. So if you look at your teeth, they're only about, oh, an eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch of actual teeth, so you don't want to go up any more than an eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch at each given pass. So I always lower my saw blade down to an eighth of an inch, do my first pass, and then I like to do about a half crank on the table saw. My saw, every saw is different, which brings it up about an eighth of an inch, do another pass, bring it up an eighth of an inch, do another pass, bring it... You get it. Okay. I'm going to show you how this works. Ready? It's also important to note that when you're doing any kind of cutting close to the blade with your fingers, you should be using a push stick. Now you want to push the board in three different directions as you do this. Towards the fence, straight down, and straight forward against the blade. Holding that board tight against the fence, you just nice and easily move it straight through the blade, just like you'd be cutting on a regular table saw. It's just at an angle, that's all. As you can see, after my first pass, I've cut a nice eighth-inch deep cove all the way down the center. If you want a deeper cove, well, you raise the saw up another eighth of an inch, and you run it back through. Then you raise the saw up another eighth of an inch, and you run it back through again. And you know, you just keep doing this over and over again until you get the depth of cove that you're looking for. The more drastic the angle of your fence, the wider your cove is going to be. So just keep that in mind. As you can see, we've cut a perfect cove right down the middle of this piece of white ash. Just like butter. So there you have it. Quick and easy cove cuts. Cove cuts come in super handy sometimes. They're really great for making that nice curved profile on a board. Lots of people will do this and then cut it straight down the middle to create a nice curved profile on molding. You can make some cool curved drawer pulls out of these. I have a video showing you exactly how to do that. I'll put a little thing up at the top if you want to check that out. Anyways, it's just a nice technique to have in the bag when you need to use it. Just remember, small little passes. Go slow. Let the teeth of the saw blade do all the work, and I guarantee, you're going to be just fine. Next! Don't do this. This is kind of a mini tip, but it's actually super helpful. And I do this every time I get a new table saw. So I've done it twice in my entire life. But anyways, when you get a new table saw or maybe you have an existing table saw and you haven't done this to it yet, what I like to do is I like to take a straight edge and I like to stick it on my saw blade. Now your saw blade teeth alternate left to right. So you've got to make sure that you're on the same alternation on the back of the blade and the front of the blade so that your straight edge is perfectly in line with the blade. If you're on one of those alternating teeth, it's going to be slightly off. You don't want that. So you make sure that you're on the correct teeth. It's also important that you're on the teeth and not the body of the saw blade. Once you get it lined up, I take a razor blade and I score my table saw, putting a nice line. Now this line is exactly in line with my blade. Once I do one side, I flip it over and I do the other side. Yes, this does mar up your table saw with two lines, but it also shows you at the front of your saw exactly where your saw blade is. Now this comes in handy if you're making multiple cuts and you're just referencing. You know you want to cut in a certain spot, but you don't know the exact distance from the fence. You can leave the saw blade on for those multiple cuts and you can reference it on this line exactly where your blade is going to cut. This just speeds up productivity because you don't have to turn your saw off to reference the blade, turn it back on, blah, blah, blah. And when you're trying to make a lot of stuff and make a lot of money, it's just a quick tip that's nice. So thought I'd share. I wouldn't do this. Let's talk about saw blades. Another question I get asked all the time is what saw blade do you use, which saw blade should I use, what are the best saw blades? Well let me tell you, I am a huge fan of Forrest brand saw blades. Now they're not cheap, they're a little spendy, but the nice thing about Forrest blades is they can be resharpened a bazillion times and when you need to get them resharpened, all you have to do is drop them in the mail to Forrest, they'll sharpen them, send them back for free. It's their kind of guarantee motto. Now the saw blade that I absolutely love and I pretty much keep on my table saw constantly is the 40 tooth flat bottom grind table saw blade. Now the flat bottom is amazing because if you're going to make multiple passes through something trying to make like a dado slot or something like that and you don't have a flat bottom grind table saw, well then you're going to get those little ridges because if it's not flat bottom grind, the blade's kind of at a point so you're going to get these little triangle ridges, you might have seen them in the bottom of your dado slot. The flat bottom grind or the finger joint grind is awesome because it makes a perfect straight line every time. Now some of you woodworkers out there that know all your technical specialty this and that might say, yeah, but the whole purpose of the angled grind is it gives you a smoother, cleaner cut when you're ripping wood. Yeah, that's probably true, but let me tell you, I'm lazy and I keep the flat bottom grind on my table saw constantly and I rip hardwoods or plywood or whatever and I've never had a problem with tear out using the flat bottom grind and because it's so nice for so many other applications, I've just pretty much gone to flat bottom grind all the time. Flat bottom grind, it makes the rockin' world go round. I just had to say it. Anyways, great saw blade, I'll put a link in the video description. I would not do this. We've all been there. We scoot our fence over too close to our blade and we kiss the blade and put a nice gouge in the side of our fence. Now you do this a lot when you're just trying to put a little groove on the very edge of a piece of wood, maybe you're making picture frames or a frame for a mirror or something like that and you need that inset groove just to be right on the edge, but it's really hard to do that without totally messing up your fence. Now a lot of you guys probably already know this, but if you just take a scrap piece of wood and you clamp it on there in what's called a sacrificial fence, then with that clamped you can put it right up to your blade, you can put it into your blade. If you only need to take like a sixteenth of an inch off something, you can move it over so your blade's just sticking out a sixteenth of an inch, boom. Then once you're done, you unclamp that, throw it away, and your fence is still nice and shiny and new. When using the table saw, you always want to make sure to have good, firm footing. So if you want a hoverboard, don't do it while using the table saw. Every now and again you're going to find yourself having to cut super thin pieces of wood along the fence. Now most of the time when you have a really thin piece of wood, you try and cut it so that piece falls on the outside of the fence, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Like for me the other day, I needed to cut some thin veneer strips, my bandsaw blade had broke, I couldn't find another one in town, so I had this great idea, why don't I just jack my blade up super high and try and cut those thin pieces on the table saw. Now I needed them to be repeatable, so I had to have that thin piece on the inside between the fence and the blade. Now if you're ever going to do this, the number one thing you want to remember is you've got to put in a zero clearance insert. Now if your saw doesn't have one of these, you can make one in about five minutes with a scrap piece of plywood. This is just half inch ply, I traced out the insert that came with my saw, and I made it, stuck it in there. You stick it in there as a solid piece, make sure that your fence is over it holding it down, and just slowly crank your blade up to cut your kerf mark. It's that easy. Now I didn't do that the other day when I was trying to cut thin pieces, and this is what happened. Now what happened there was because I didn't have a zero clearance insert, those thin pieces were thin enough that by the time I got to the end of the cut, as you can see in the video, it was so thin that it, boom, fell down in the opening of my insert, it got stuck against the saw blade, and it shot the whole thing in a horrible kickback back towards me. Now luckily I was taking safety precautions, I was using a push stick, I wasn't standing directly behind the piece, so I came out of it unscathed. But it could have been a lot worse, and it could have been completely avoided by using a zero clearance insert. So, make sure you do that. Whew, that wasn't safe. Anyways, I know we just scratched the surface of this whole table saw thing, but I couldn't make this a five hour long video. I'm sure I'll do more like this in the future. If you haven't already, subscribe down below so you know when those videos come out. Also, go follow me on Instagram, go check out our podcast, Shop Sounds Podcast. It's a good listen. And check out my website for some cool stuff. And check out the video description for links to all the things you saw in this video so you can buy them and do all this on your own. Whew, good day.