Tips and Techniques Archives - Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

Essential Track Saw Tips

A.J. Hamler — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 20:55:29 +0000

Track saws are game-changers, but there are some very basic things to remember. Here are three tips to keep your cutting right on track.

Theoretically, you can make a track as long as you like by joining shorter tracks together. Most tracks have square ends that are suitable for joining, but it pays to double-check. Whenever joining tracks, use a reliable straightedge to ensure that they join straight and true before tightening down the connectors.

For most track saw cuts you need to go all the way through the material, which means anything underneath is also going to get cut. To protect workbenches and floors (and prevent serious damage to blades on concrete), get a sheet of rigid foam insulation. It acts as a solid, sturdy sacrificial base you can use repeatedly with no damage to your bench or blades.

Track saws already deliver arguably the cleanest cuts around. But some materials, such as laminate countertops or plywood with paper-thin veneer, are still prone to tearout and splintering. To help prevent this, before making a full-depth cut in the workpiece, do a shallow scoring cut about 1/16″ deep. Then, lower the blade to make the full cut.

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Fence Rail Support for Sheet Goods

Charles Mak — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:00:07 +0000

A professional cabinetmaker friend of mine shared a simple way of supporting and handling a large sheet on the table saw by making use of the front rail of the saw’s rip fence. Just build an L-shaped support to fit into the hollow square end of the front rail.

This way, you can slide the support in or out to suit the size of the plywood you need to cut. He has used this adjustable support to handle 4 x 8 sheets in his commercial shop for years, which is a better way than trying to find and place roller supports on the side of the table saw.

– Charles Mak
Calgary, Alberta

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Shop Vac Cleans Sander Canisters

Bruce Kieffer — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 15:00:16 +0000

Most orbital sanders include an onboard dust collection canister. They capture most of the dust, but they’re a mess to empty. You can make quick and clean work of this task by removing the dust canister from the sander and holding a running shop vac hose against its open end. Then watch the dust disappear from the canister in seconds!

– Bruce Kieffer
Edina, Minnesota

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Resawing Point Fence

Reader Submitted — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 21:11:07 +0000

Here’s a nifty way to turn Rockler’s Universal Fence Clamp into a point fence for resawing at your band saw. Drill a hole into the end of a 3/4″ or larger dowel that matches the height of your band saw’s rip fence.

Insert the clamp’s adjustable arm into the hole and tighten the assembly securely to your rip fence. Thanks to the dowel’s curvature, you can “steer” workpieces against it while resawing to adjust for blade drift issues as needed.

– Wade Meyer
Johnstown, Pennsylvania

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Perfecting Edge Sanding

A.J. Hamler — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 15:00:59 +0000

Using a sander or even a sanding block on the narrow edge of a workpiece can be tough. There’s not a lot of real estate there to balance the sander properly, making it easy to inadvertently rock the sander side to side and round over crisp edges.

It’s not easy to balance a sander on the edge of a panel. A straight piece
of scrap clamped flush with the edge widens the surface area, helping to
keep the edges of the panel square and flat.

The trick here is to make the edge temporarily wider by clamping a straight piece of stock beside the edge to use as a sanding guide. This effectively doubles or triples the edge width, creating a more stable platform for supporting the sander.

Narrow workpiece edges are often difficult to sand with a machine. A low-tech solution is to sand the piece against your table saw table using the rip fence as a side support. It will keep the workpiece edge square.

Sometimes, especially for edge sanding, a powered sander isn’t the best choice. For smaller workpieces, the easier way to edge sand is using a simple trick I learned years ago. Head over to your table saw and lock down the rip fence. Now, slip a full sheet of sandpaper underneath the fence and hold it down from one side. Place the workpiece against the other side of the fence and rub it back and forth over the paper. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll get a square edge with perfectly crisp corners.

Contour sanding grips, like these from Rockler, are an effective alternative to a powered contoured sander and will help keep profiles crisp.

For profiled edges, unless you have a powered contour sander, hand-sanding is the best bet. You can wrap small pieces of sandpaper around a dowel or other round object. Or use a set of contour sanding grips, like the ones available from Rockler.

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Save Those Pizza Savers!

Reader Submitted — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:00:13 +0000

Those little three-legged plastic pizza savers that prevent the pizza box from collapsing have great workshop use, too! I turn them upside down so that the small tips are up. They are perfect for painting or spray-finishing projects. They can be used as many times as you want or they can be thrown away, and I have found that each will support at least 10 lbs. They can be purchased online for less than 15 cents each in a quantity of 100. Or just save every one that comes with your pizzas.

– Jim Wilson
San Marcos, Texas

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Always Have a Clean Glue Spout

Reader Submitted — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:00:53 +0000

Between uses, the spouts of my glue bottles dry and clog up, so I have to spend time cleaning them before I can even get started on a project. But I finally found a solution: I saved the spout from an empty glue bottle and soaked it in water for a few minutes to clean it. When I finished my next glueup, I replaced the “dirty” spout on that bottle with the clean one I had saved and immediately soaked the dirty one. Cycling the spouts this way, my glue bottle always has a clean spout to start with and a clean replacement waiting in reserve when I finish.

– Dusty Williams
Redlands, California

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Scrap Channel Makes Edging Easier to Install

Reader Submitted — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:00:29 +0000

When nailing wood face trim to a plywood edge, such as to hide the core material on the front of a cabinet or shelf, I sometimes find that the trim will “walk” on me either to the inside or outside of the piece I’m nailing to. My solution is to clamp a small piece of scrap wood on each side of the plywood to make a channel for the trim to fit snugly inside. Then, driving nails through it has no eff ect on shifting its position relative to the edge of the plywood. Problem solved!

– James McKinnis
Sheldon, Iowa

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Safety First on Spinning Scroll Chucks

Reader Submitted — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 16:03:06 +0000

The jaws on my lathe’s scroll chuck are dangerous when they’re open wide and spinning, and they can take off a lot of skin quickly. To reduce that risk, I wrap a wrist sweatband around the jaws and secure it with a rubber band cut from a bicycle inner tube. It’s much easier to see the sweatband than the bare spinning jaws, and if I get too close, my hands are warned by the soft cloth before I get hurt.

– Randy Wolfe
Hoover, Alabama

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Hanging Shop Can Organizers

Reader Submitted — Fri, 24 May 2024 15:00:28 +0000

I needed to both free up some shelf space, as well as have a better way to view and access my woodshop “canned goods” inventory. It was my intention to build one from wood, as I’d seen different DIY units in various woodworking forums. However, I got into a time crunch and came up with this solution that was much quicker (and probably less expensive) than designing and building one from scratch. These door-hung vinyl organizers are marketed for shoes, but I figured they can also hold other items. They not only let me recover several square feet of shelf space, but I also now have a clear view of and easy access to all these items instead of having to dig around on a cluttered shelf. Plus, they hang out of the way in what was previously unused space and cost less than $10 each.

– Chris Hubert
Lakewood, Washington

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