Rip Fence and Rip Capacity

Published at Tuesday, January 15th 2019. by Adelisa Legrand in Industrial Machinery.

Push Stick; if you are not the lucky owner of a saw with the SawStop safety system, you are going to need a push stick, which comes in handy when you need to slide the wood through the blade. Having your hands too close to the saw blade is never a good thing, so it is a wise idea to rely on a push stick. You can get one at just about any shop that sells woodwork supplies, or make one yourself. There are plenty of tutorials on line to teach you how to do so.

One thing you have to keep in mind is to slide the wood a bit slower than you normally would because the movement of the gouge can move it out of place. To make sure this doesn't happen you can secure the board to the gouge using a clamp. Thanks to a miter gouge you can also make compound cuts. Compounds cuts are made by setting the miter gouge at a desired angle and bevel of the saw blade at the same time.

see also

Band Saw Log Jig

Dust Collection. Dust collection port Having sawdust all over your workshop and work surface is not only annoying, but it can make your job more difficult. It's much easier to work with wood if the table of the saw is smooth and clean. For this purpose most table saws have dust collection ports which can be attached to a vacuum. You may also come across saws that have a cloth pouch which you can attach to the saw so it collects all the dust in one “tidy” place.

Blade RPM. The maximum speed of a blade is usually expressed in RPM (revolutions per minute). One thing you need to look for is the speed of the table saw, which must never exceed the speed of the blade. Blades are designed to rotate at a certain speed, and using it on a table saw which exceeds that speed will cause the blade to break apart due to centrifugal force. This is pretty much everything you need to know about blades. If you decide you want to learn even more about blades and their properties, this should serve as a good base for you to build upon.

After you have penciled in a line where you want the cross-cut to be made, align it with the blade. With the saw turned on guide the miter gouge forward until the cut is made while making sure the board is firmly in place against the straight edge of the miter gouge. One of the simplest cuts a miter gouge allows you to make is a square cross-cut. Simply set the miter gouge at 90 degrees or zero (depending on the markings), and push the board toward the blade. The result will be a board that is cut square. You can also make angled cuts by setting the miter gouge at an angle of up to 45 degrees.

Table Inserts. throat plate Table inserts, or throat plates as they are usually called are nothing more than thin pieces of metal or wood, mounted around the blade and leveled with the surface of the table. This prevents small pieces of wood from falling inside the arbor.

The blade tilt hand wheel is located on the side of the saw and allows you to tilt the blade up to 45 degrees away from the fence. The hand wheel which allows you to adjust the tilt of the saw blade is usually located on the left or right side of the unit depending on which way the arbor is made to tilt. Portable table saws usually don't give you as much control as professional cabinet saws though, and they often combine elevation and tilt adjustment in one wheel.

Gallery of Rip Fence and Rip Capacity