I'm not a complete stranger to a saw or a square, but this will be my first stab at making furniture. My first piece is going to be the farmhouse bedside table. I made all of the cuts this evening and it made me wonder...how do those who are really skilled at this make perfect cuts?
I'm talking about when you have to cut two boards the exact same length. The width of the saw blade and the width of the pencil mark come into play, and whereas most of my cuts were extremely close, many were off by a few mm's. The best I can figure to fix it is to clamp the boards together (When I can) and shave a tiny bit off with the chop saw in one cut. There's got to be a better way though, right?
**I see I made the newbie mistake of putting a thread in the wrong forum, I didn't realize there was a whole section for cutting. My apologies...**
haus3755
Sun, 02/26/2012 - 21:42
Good info. Whereas I'm not
Good info. Whereas I'm not about to give up the power tools, today I did give up the pencil. I made the cuts for the "squared 2" headboard and made my marks with a knife. I also stopped marking for several cuts at once and made one cut at a time, and VERY closely aligned the blade on my mark for each cut. Whereas it took quit a bit longer, my accuracy skyrocketed.
Anonymous Coward (not verified)
Thu, 03/15/2012 - 02:29
"I also stopped marking for
"I also stopped marking for several cuts at once and made one cut at a time,"
That was your problem, because the combined errors of cutting to the mark, and the saw kerf, can be quite a bit of wobble.
"VERY closely aligned the blade on my mark for each cut. "
If you need two boards the same length, cut them both to a bit longer than needed, clamp them together and cut them to the final length at the same time.
OR you can use your first board as a saw adjusting reference and only measure once - let's pretend I'm cutting a bunch of 21.5 inch boards from a 1x8 or 1x10
1 - Measure and cut the first piece. Mark it as "pattern"
2 - Align pattern to the end of the remainder of the board and clamp them together.
3 - Slide the boards under the sawblade until the edge of the blade's teeth barely touches the end of the pattern. The boards should be snug against the back of the saw, etc.
4 - Clamp both boards in that position (most miter saws have a board clamp)
5 - Cut the bottom board
Repeat for the rest of the needed pieces, always using the same one as the pattern.
claydowling
Mon, 02/27/2012 - 05:50
Marking and sawing accuracy
The hand saws will give you greater accuracy once you understand how to use them and have developed good habits. For one-off projects I prefer them, and reserve the table saw for production work.
A few months back Megan Fitzpatrick did her first project for Popular Woodworking that wasn't a beginner project, and had the experience of cutting tenons on both a table saw and by hand. She found the hand-cut tenons fit perfect right off the saw, but the machine cut tenons needed a lot of fussing and sneaking up on the proper dimension. I had a similar experience when I built my own coffee table: hand cut and everything fits right. The worst I had was a little clean up with a chisel where I used a saw that was too small for the job on one tenon.
haus3755
Sat, 03/01/2014 - 21:00
Came across this post of mine
Came across this post of mine from the past. After I bought a table saw, I learned all about stop blocks and cross cut sleds. I'm never looking back now! A sled and stop blocks are used in practically every single project I build now, they're an absolute staple.