George Vondriska

Portable Power Tool Safety

George Vondriska
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
Duration 5:20
Loaded: 3.11%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time 5:20
 
1x
  • Chapters
  • descriptions off, selected
  • en (Main), selected
Duration:   5  mins

Description

When using portable power tools it’s very important to have your work secured, and to keep your hands out of the way of the cutting tool. Here are some tips to help you keep your project parts in place while you’re cutting them, and keep your hands safely out of the way. Remember to always make power tool safety a priority in your workshop.

Rockler T-Track System provided by Rockler. For more information, visit www.rockler.com.

Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.

Make a comment:
characters remaining

One Response to “Portable Power Tool Safety”

  1. Valdek Waslan

    Good, good,... very good.

The thing I wanna talk about today is making sure that when you do your woodworking specifically with portable power tools you're keeping yourself real safe in the shop. And what this is all about is securing your work. I've taught a lot of woodworking classes and I've watched students who aren't quite familiar or comfortable with portable power tools doing some funky stuff. And it just kind of creeps you out because you wanna make sure that your fingers never get in the way of a cutter. So the first thing that we're gonna look at here is routing the edge of a board.

We're gonna run a profiling bit all the way around all four edges. And so the easiest way to do that is to have the work secured on a non-skid surface like I've got here. And what we'll be able to do is set our work up on those pods. And what's cool about this is that, because those are nonskid the work isn't gonna move when I route on it. Additionally, I don't have any hold downs going this way.

So it's gonna let me go all the way around the perimeter and one fluid motion. That's gonna give me better results rather than clamp it, route, get to the clamp move the clamp, blah, blah second verse same as the first. So let me show you how this works with our work secured up on those nine skid pads. So again, couple of great attributes here. The work stays put, it's in a position where I can easily work on it and it's on those non-skid pads that hold it in place.

I'm gonna take this mechanism off of here and we'll move on to another one. A biscuit joiner is really a great way to assemble components. One of the things I hate seeing is when somebody tries to secure the work with one hand while they're cutting a biscuit slot with the other, not at all safe. The other thing that we really rely on with the biscuit joiner is if you're registering off the bottom of the machine, we wanna make sure that the wood is really securely held down. So that registration surfaces consistent from part to part.

So in this case, what we really wanna do is get a hole down in place. That's gonna secure the work. This is gonna me a couple of different things. One, my work is now nice and solid, so I don't have to have a hand there. Two, I know that the bottom of the wood is right down on the table top, making sure that that reference is the same from component to component.

So my lesson for you out of this is using a biscuit joiner make sure that your work is secure. Make sure that your reference surfaces are uniform and we're gonna get good results and keep your fingers safe. Next thing we're gonna have a look at here is routing a data across this piece of plywood common operation to do with a handheld router. And in this case, I need a couple of things to happen. I wanna make sure that I can cantilever my work off the bench because my fence on my router is gonna call for that.

And I wanna make sure that the material doesn't creep at all while I'm routing it. So in this case, we're gonna get some lateral pressure on it. And with this piece cantilevered, then I can also ride my fence out here and here's how that's gonna look. So the moral of the story for me, is I really want you to start with 10 and quit with 10. I wanna make sure that when you're using any tool, in this case particularly portable power tools, your work is secure.

So you can concentrate on the cut. You can have two hands on the tool and make sure that you're enjoying your woodworking. You're getting good results and you're staying safe.

Get exclusive premium content! Sign up for a membership now!