Table Saw: Safe Ripping and Cross Cutting

When you talk to woodworkers, no one is gonna argue that the table saws at the heart of most woodworking shops, which means you're gonna use it a lot. Which means it's really important to understand how to use it safely. On the Laguna saw here today, what we're gonna have a look at is ripping and cross cutting and making sure that you're doing that the best way you can, starting up with blade selection. Have two blades on the saw. And what we wanna do is isolate this from ripping blades to cross cutting blades. Ripping blades typically have 24 to 40 teeth around the rim, cross cut blades typically have 60 or 80 teeth around the rim. What we can do at the cross cut blade is we can also send that toward man-made materials. So the bottom line is the same blade I use for cross cutting, I use for plywood and products like that. The reason I'm rolling this into the safety aspect is it's really important that we pick the right blade for what we're doing. When we're ripping, cutting with the grain, you want a ripping oriented blade in there. When we're cross cutting, you're gonna get the best possible cut by using a cross cutting blade. And as we do this, of course, safety. Anytime we're making changes to the saw, make sure you're unplugged. Let's have a look at making sure the blade is at the right height and saw I was still unplugged. Great gauge here is to make the bottom of the gullets the valleys between the teeth even with the top of whatever it is you're cutting. That's all the blade we need sticking out for that cut. Now, while we're here, let's talk about this relationship the blade and the splitter or a riving knife that's behind the blade. And this is really important. We always wanna have a splitter in place or alternatively a riving knife. And what this will do is as we're making the cut this acts as a filler in the curve for the cut to make sure that the wood can't come back in and pinch on the blade. One of the things that's important there is if you're using a thin curve blade, which are very popular you should also have with it a thin curve, riving knife which Laguna does have available for this saw. So it's really important to have one of these two in place. Whenever we're doing these kinds of cuts. Next let's talk about body position relative to the saw. As you're using the saw, you really wanna think about where your hips are relative to the saw blade. The teeth on the saw blade are going about 150 miles an hour. And if they grab a chunk of wood and throw it out that's kickback, it comes back really fast. So a great rule of thumb is to pay attention to the miter gauge slots and either be to the left or to the right, depending on what you're doing. Most commonly most right-handed people are gonna end up over here to the left of the left slot. There are some occasions where you might find it easier to be over here. Just keep in mind. These are the rules of the road right here. These are the lines you wanna pay attention to. So you're never standing in between them. For ripping, here's our rule of thumb and thumb keeping. If you're making a rip that is three inches or less, you have to use a push stick in order to make that cut. Over three inches if you wanna still use a push stick, that's fine but you don't have to. Three inches or less, you have to use it. So let's have a look at what this whole thing's gonna look like. I'm gonna set up here for a narrow rip. And I'm just watching the cursor on the fence to show me what my measurement here is. Now we can plug the saw in. Body position, I'm gonna be to the left of this miter gauge slot. My left hand is gonna hold this board against the fence but never come in front of the line created by the insert and the cast iron. So this is my stopping point for my left hand. My right hand is gonna feed this forward until it's about at the edge of the saw table. At that point I'm gonna grab my push stick to finish the cut. Left-hand provides that lateral pressure right hand forward. Right hand gets to the end of the table. Finish the cut. And since we're talking about safety, dust collection is an aspect of that. Wanna make sure that you're not breathing the stuff in. Wood dust can have a cumulative effect on you which means not being allergic to it today. Doesn't mean you're not gonna be allergic to it a year or five years from now. So a good dust collection on your tools is a big deal. Another important safety thing is having an out feed table. An out feed support of some kind, because in the absence of that, what you might find is you're making a cut. When the cut is finished, you're reaching around to prevent that really expensive piece of wood from falling to the floor. You don't wanna do that. You don't wanna be reaching over the saw like that. So having an out feed table to receive those parts for you is a really good place to be. So again, to revisit ripping make sure you've got the right blade in the saw. Body position, always on the table saw, ripping or cross cutting is really critical. And three inches or less, you got to use a push stick. So make sure it's conveniently nearby and make sure you're the cut. And you have something out there to catch it. I'm gonna change blades get the cross cut blade in there. And we wanna have a look at some cross cuts scenarios to make sure you stay safe with that too. Cross cutting, couple things. Make sure your miter gauge is square. If you're trying to do a 90 degree cut. As you make that cut what I'm doing here the body English is a good squeeze between my left and my right hand. My hips are still to the left of the miter gauge slot. So I'm out of the kickback line. Squeeze in here to keep the board tight to the miter gauge, push through and then really important. Pull away from the blade back up. Don't stay in this position. One, the anti-kickback pawls aren't gonna let you back up. Two, you never wanna back up over a spinning cutting tool. So push through, come away then back up. You're ready for your next cut. That's that. Now I've seen this a lot and here's something you don't wanna do. It's very tempting. If we wanna cut 80 bazillion pieces to let's pick a number. 12 1/2 inches to do this, this, this. And the rule here that we're breaking is you don't wanna use the miter gauge and the rip fence at the same time, cause this can really lend itself to something binding up here and you get a kickback. So when you wanna do repetitive cuts we can take advantage of the fence. We just have to do it a little bit differently. I own a block that is a perfect one inch thick. What I'll do is I'll clamp it onto the fence. And let me clamp it. And then I wanna point something else out for you. When I put this on the bottom of the block is about 1/8 or 1/4 inch above the saw table. What's about to happen is that my board is gonna come over. It's gonna kiss against the stop black. Then I'm gonna move forward. If the block is tight to the table, you might get a little puddle of sawdust there. Then when we come over, you're up against that dust pile. You're not solid against the block. It's gonna throw off your measurement. Now, the way this works is that's a one inch block. If I want 12 1/2, use the pointer on the fence set to 13 1/2. And that's the benefit of that block. Being a perfect one inch. Now I can come over, kiss the block, move forward. I'm using the fence and the miter gauge in conjunction with each other, but not at the same time. Cause as soon as we come forward we no longer have contact here. Kiss the block, check your body position. And that technique would let us cut eleventy billion pieces. If we needed them all to the exact same size. Now fence blade orientation stuff. Let's talk about this some more. Another thing that might be tempting is we have a part that looks like this and we wanna get this length uniform. Here's the rule this is gonna break. The length of the piece the distance from the blade of the fence. Can't exceed the length that's against the fence. We've got a rectangle here. This length can't be more than this. And the reason for that is that if we try to do this and what ends up happening is it because of the length of the piece, there's a lot of leverage out here where the cut is. And it's easy for that to start spinning off the fence. If it does, it can climb up on the back of the blade. That's a kickback thing. You're gonna eat the board. So the rule is this length distance from blade to the fence. Can't exceed this length in a scenario like this. Then we need to go back to cross cut slide on the table saw or using the stop block. Like we just did, there are other approaches. I just wanna make sure that you don't try to do this on your saw. There are some rules of the road for you about blade selection setting up the blade safely, rippling, safely ripping safely cross cutting to make sure that when you're running your table saw, your starting with 10 and quitting with 10.