5 Beginner Table Saw Tips & Tools

the number one thing that I see wrong every time I turn on YouTube is people using their push sticks or their push shoes wrong on a table saw let's show you the right way whether you're accustomed to using a push stick or a push shoe what I see people doing wrong all the time is placement where they're putting the push shoe or the push stick on the material as they're pushing it through the saw and this is one of those things that you got to watch out for because it can cause Kickback if you're not careful we're naturally inclined to keep everything we can as far away from the blade so a lot of people put their push shoes and their push sticks right up against the fence the problem is you're pushing on this one corner forward and the blade is pretty pushing back here so it's really easy to get that material off and it goes off in the wrong direction and you're not getting a perfectly straight cut the proper way to use a push stick or a push you is to go between the blade and the fence that distance half it and then you want to position your push you or push dick just to the left if you're cutting on the left side of the fence so you're past the center fulcrum on the material and if you're pushing this way it's pushing the material into the fence and instead of being on this side which is pushing the material this way the Blade's pushing the material that way and it's going to push it away from the fence for me personally I've always preferred a push you over say push decks especially one that has a handle that's like this because it lines everything up with your Anatomy so you have all that power behind your arm that's going to be important especially if you're getting a blade pinch from wet wood that's pinching on the blade and trying to push things back at you it gives you a lot of control to stop that material while you turn off your saw but that's not the case for everybody Some people prefer push sticks this is where I'm going to get some old school folks upset with me I don't care for push sticks and there's something I see happen a lot on YouTube that is absolutely not safe and we're going to talk about that right now so what I see all the time is people starting the material by hand taking one hand off to use a push stick taking the other hand off to pick up another push stick and at this moment there's a lot going on and there's almost no down pressure on the material so that could pop up at you and then they reach behind the blade hold the material like this and push all the way through so this hands way out past the blade and they're leaning over the top top of their saw there is absolutely no way they're getting away from Kickback if it does happen and that puts another handout here in front of the blade offering even more opportunity for damage to the fingers if something bad happens now before you go any further I want to make sure everybody understands that I'm not poo pooing the push stick I think there's a lot of places where they are very handy we use ours more often on the band saw than we do on the table saw but doing it like we just demonstrated is absolutely not a method that should be used and it's used all the time and this is I'm going to have people in the comments section blowing that up if you're going to do it that way or you're not comfortable using a push you independently then by all means use a feather board feather boards are going to keep you safe and you're going to get better quality Cuts so positioning your push you or push stick on the material is really important now you can get away from that just by using a featherboard and there's lots of options on the market I want to show you a few these are three different feather boards I like so a feather board either goes in your track or attaches with a magnet and it holds your material up against the fence so when you're pushing it through the side keeps that material up against the fence that gives you much better cut quality and it keeps you safer these are three options that I like this is from both products the nice thing about it has an Eva insert here that's replaceable so if it wears out you can replace it and you don't have to slide this thing in from the end you can just drop it right in the track and when you tighten down the bolts it locks it in place and that is locked in place another one of my favorites especially when I'm cutting wider boards and I need to get further out away from my track I can just use this this is a feather word for mag switch and it magnetizes in place just by turning these two switches on so that locks it down so I can basically put it anywhere I want this is a really fancy feather board from Harvey tools which is also really nice now it originally came with a miter slot Groove so you can slide it in and lock it in place I've put some mag switches on mine so I can move it around anywhere I want so I can lock that in place and then I can also adjust the tension right here to keep more or less tension against the material that's holding it up against the fence that's really nice and all three of these come from different price points now all of these work on cast iron tables but if you have an aluminum bed table on some of the smaller saws the bow product one is the only one that's going to work now you can put the t-track back on the compass and use it that way make sure you ask first that their t-slot will fit on your aluminum top table saw because those can vary a little bit on the aluminum tubs so and these come in at all different prices the bow is going to start out around 30 35 the mag switch right here is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 65 and the Harvey the Mack Daddy super fancy one is normally running around 275 dollars with the t-track without the mag switches oh I'm going to get some Guff if I don't mention the jesum system which is a system that sits on top of your table saw fence and holds material both down and up against the fence via some roller Wheels we obviously don't have one of those in the shop and I wouldn't use it very often because ninety percent of the material I cut is two inches wide or less and I put my push shoe right where the roller feeds would be so there's really never a need for us to have one in the shop but those things are available and I'm not aware of the price points on those all those options will help keep you safer and give you better quality cuts when you're using them the other thing that we've seen as well especially with some of the overseas videos that are coming in are people free handing cuts on the table saw that is downright stupid don't ever attempt that on a table saw so if you're cross cutting on a table saw use your miter gauge makes it safe you have a nice handhold and it's not going to move on you because if that moves on you when you're cross cutting it's going to kick back and you're going to get hurt even if you're cutting a piece of plywood like this and this is the one that we see the most is that they're cross-cutting plywood that's a rectangle shape like this but it's maybe 12 or less inches wide this has huge potential for Kickback if you're pushing it along over here especially if you're pushing over here on this side of that half mark you have a really high potential for Kickback so again this is something that should be done with a Crosscut sled or a miter gauge don't do this freehanded you're just asking for trouble if you just purchase your first table saw there's a couple of pieces of kit that you're going to want to have one of those is a micro Square to make sure that your table saw blade stays 90 degrees to the top of your table saw when in use and you can adjust that obviously but you always have to have a zero point to start from when you're moving away from that to cut an angle and to do that these little guys are the best so the magnetic microscare will magnetize right to a cast iron top you can set it up against your blade and that gives you a really good indication of whether your blade is at 90 or not and that's really important when you're doing things like glue up so making sure that your joints are at 90 degrees when you put pressure on them the clamps aren't making them walk one way or the other now when it comes to table size it's pretty easy to get lost in all the accessories that are available for a table saw one of the things that I'm sure many of you have seen is those big overhead units that have dust collection and anti-kick back on them you'll never see one of those on our saws because ninety percent of what we do is right up next to the blade cutting thinner strips or frame framing material and in that case they're just in the way so we spend more time moving it out of the way and putting it back than we would actually cutting stuff so if you're not if you're only going to be cutting large material like plywood or big wide boards that's something to consider having but if you're like us and we're going to do 90 of what we do is going to be very small all Cuts then they more or less just get in the way oh so here's a breakdown of some of the things that I would be buying first for my saw first of all making a good push shoe or having a good push stick next is the feather board you know they're indispensable when it comes to getting really good quality cuts and help keeping you safer on the table saw and then when you jump over to the accuracy the first thing I would do is get a magnetic square and a digital protractor once you involve these things in your table saw game you're going to be a lot safer and you're going to get a lot better results another big mistake I see beginners doing is keeping dull blades in their saw keeping a sharp blade in yourself is going to make everything so much better if you see your wood start to burn or it feels harder to push through it's time to change that stable saw blade and there's a lot of videos out there about what's the best table saw blade and you can get lost down that rabbit hole if you want our favorite table saw blades are the prestige blades the electric blue Prestige blades from Amana I keep the 40 tooth in my saw 99.9 of the time and it does almost everything I needed to do you know if you want to go down that rabbit hole about blades be my guest for me I'm going to keep this Workhorse in my saw at all times and I cut plywood MDF regular wood all of that with it you're not going to find a better value when you start talking about price versus performance we've had these blades in our saws as long as three months at a time before we pull them out and resharpen them or replace them so this is our favorite blade now there's lots of blades for lots of different things as far as dado Stacks flat tops for getting flat cuts on the top of the blade all kinds of things and you'll learn more of that the deeper you go down the rabbit hole the other thing you want to be careful about when you're picking a blade for your size understanding the horsepower of the table saw for instance I wouldn't put this in a table saw that's less than two horsepower because it's a thicker blade so if it's under two horsepower you might want to think about using a thinner blade this is not the first table saw tips video I've done I did another one about six years ago that has some valuable information in it as well and I'll post a link at the end of this video so you can go check that video out back when I was bald and much younger than I am today that about wraps it up for this video folks when you're out there using these dangerous pieces of equipment be safe make sure you know what you're doing and be careful about what you see on social media and just assume that that what that person's doing is safe because there are often times where it's not and at the end of the day ultimately you're responsible for your safety so take the time to learn the equipment and understand what you're doing thanks for watching I hope you found this video useful and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: izzy swan

Views: 56,978

Keywords: How to, tablesaw, table saw, tools, projects, woodworking, shop projects, jigs, band saw, Izzy swan, Table Saw Saftey, table saw tools, how to use a table saw, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, tips and tricks, table saw tips, woodworking tools, power tools, wood working, woodworking for beginners, table saw basics, table saw fence, easy woodworking

Id: tpHpS2JSZBM

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023