Carpentry Secrets Revealed - Pro Miter Saw Tips!

what's up guys welcome back to the channel uh let me just start by saying i've been posting a ton of videos but i just don't know where you guys have been no one's been watching them so hopefully you get this one no but in all seriousness uh we recently did a job where we actually had to tear out what another installer previously installed and we had to tear it out because the quality was just really bad now i'm not here to name names or call people out that's never what this is about it's always about learning and getting better so as we began the tear out on this project i was just thinking of all the things that the previous installer did wrong they were all jumping out at me because you're handling someone else's work and you're thinking i would have done this i would have done that i wouldn't have done this i would have done that and it's kind of like when you you're a carpenter you have this like i call it ocd obsessed carpenter disorder which means that you just analyze everything it's not to say that you're better but you're just thinking of like how would i have done it you know i'll sit there and tell my wife like we'll be at like i don't know at a hotel or something i'll be like look at the way they did this corner and she's like can we just go to the room and i'm like okay so john and i went over there and we tore it out i'll show you some video before we tore it out and you can see from this footage right here that the quality of this wall is really bad they use a plywood backing which doesn't paint up well it's not smooth they use mdf which is fine if you know what you're doing but you can see all the nail holes volcanoed and mushroomed out and it's just really screaming bad quality a ton of caulking a ton of wood filler in the joints and you know on top of all that she asked for a flat finish or like a satin but they sprayed it with the semi gloss and this is actually sprayed what you are seeing so contrary to popular belief spraying doesn't just make everything a fine finish even if you have a fine finish sprayer if you don't have that carpentry on point if you don't have that prep on point it's just going to highlight all the imperfections in the work that you're doing so but the point is all these things were jumping out at me and it kind of made me think of all the questions i've gotten over the years because with an audience of nearly 400 000 subscribers to the channel which just blows my mind it's crazy but with that many people there's basically not a week that goes by that i don't get some kind of question that relates to quality something along the lines of like hey i'm doing this the same way i'm seeing you do it in the video and the results are just not coming out the same can you help me and that's what i wanted to make this video for give you guys a few tips at the miter saw that will really improve your carpentry so these are these are things that are really going to help especially if you're you know having that struggle or if you're a beginner if you get these early on this is really going to save you a lot of headache because everything i'm going to show you here is basically learned the hard way which i pretty much learned mostly everything in my life so let's get to it tip number one the saw does not matter and what i mean by that it doesn't matter what color your saw is you know a lot of people are going to disagree with me here and say you really need a high-end professional saw to do good carpentry you know god forbid the festival people flood the comment section no i'm just kidding but you know a lot of people think you know you can only do do good carpentry with a festival capex or you can only do good carpentry with a dewalt you know dual bevel sliding compound miter saw like this one here now this is going to give you more options this is going to allow you to perform more tasks with the dual bevel slider and you know but it doesn't matter what brand it is you can go to harbor freight and get the hercules one it really does not matter as long as that saw is calibrated so you have you know detents here you can hear them click into place as long as those detents are calibrated for the degree that they read out and your bevel is calibrated as well this is your bevel back here you can do good carpentry if you have that saw calibrated so you know i know a lot of people are going to argue with me about you need a good saw i you know you need a good saw as in needs to spin a blade it needs a motor that spins a blade and it needs to be calibrated that's where it ends so yes i i love dewalt miter saws they're my favorite i've had many other brands and i've always come back to the dewalts so this is the one i prefer you don't need something like this if you're just getting started you can use something else but again make sure it's calibrated and make sure it's on point with those those degrees that you're reading because what good is it if you measure up some carpentry work and then you you know get all your your miters figured out you get all your degrees figured out for your cuts and then you come to a saw that is not calibrated that is really going to throw you off and you're going to be scratching your head and wondering what this something's wrong with this you know this angle finder this miter saw protractor but really it could be your saw so tip number two is going to be about your blade here and the blade is really a very important part it's just as important part as the saw being calibrated in my opinion so what i like to use is an 80 tooth count blade or higher so you know you can get away with lower count blades but for finished carpentry you're just going to get a cleaner cut if you stick to those parameters 80 tooth count or higher this one right here is a hundred tooth and this one right here is very sharp so that is the most important part about your blade it doesn't matter what brand it is doesn't matter and you really when i started out i was using the blades that came with the saw which were like general construction blades i don't even remember how many teeth they had but it was probably like 40 teeth or something and they were sharp and i was getting away with doing trim carpentry granted i do a lot of mdf and you know pine which are very soft materials but you know once i stepped up my game and i started getting higher tooth count blades i started seeing those results get better and the cuts get cleaner so just try to keep with 80 tooth or higher but like i said having a sharp blade is going to be paramount and that's going to be just as important as having a calibrated saw so the next thing we're going to talk about here is material support and this is where a lot of people go wrong you know you have your saw calibrated you have a sharp blade on there but you're cutting these long pieces of trim now these things are about 16 foot you know that's pretty much 90 of all trim is 16 foot you have an occasional 17 footer for casing but that's a long piece of trim you know and you're trying to hang that off one side of the saw and it's got weight and it's leaning over you're gonna have to have that thing supported so that it can sit flat with the table of the saw and it can sit flat against the fence of the saw and if you don't have that even if your saw is calibrated even if your blade is sharp you are not going to get the results that you want that's why you see me with this cut hub system a very expensive professional grade system that i don't expect you to buy i mean this thing is thirty four hundred dollars and of course most people are not going to buy this this is just something that we do every day so we're gonna you know invest into it but all you need is you need material support in both directions because you're going to be making miters left and right and you need that material support to be perfectly level with the table top of your saw if you can get that that will eliminate about 90 percent of the problems that i see people send me pictures and they say what's going on why is this not lining up in ninety percent of the time the material support is lacking so that's why a lot of people like cutting their baseboard flat because baseboard is like one of the main culprits of it you know you've got a piece of base hanging off the edge over here and it's you know raising up and you know you're holding it here and you're about to cut but it's just not quite down all the way get yourself material support rig something up you know i i did on the dewalt stand for many years just have material support that is level with the table and fence of the saw really the table you know you can push up against the fence once you have this level so here's a closer look at what i mean guys you know i've got this level right here with my cut hub system and then it is level with the table top of my miter saw as well and you can see this little dip right here i actually lowered that a little bit this is an aftermarket part that i actually put on there for just setting up jigs and stuff like that which brings me to the next point we're going to talk about so the next thing we're going to talk about is having some kind of jig set up where you can make repeatable cuts because often in trim carpentry you're going to be cutting things nested crown molding or offset like the offset panel moldings that i cut and you're going to need to make those cuts and make them repeatable so where they're on point every time you know i've seen people and i've been guilty of this too where you don't set up the crown stop and you kind of just try to hold it in place nested and it's not going to give you the results that you want you know you're going to want to have a definite crown stop or a definite you know offset panel molding jig where you can make those cuts and they're going to be the same every time because if they're off a little bit you know a little bit times two is a really big it's exponential so you know if you have one miter that's off a little bit and then another miter off that's a little bit when those come together you're you're just times two in trouble so don't take the risk set up some kind of jig mine is a track tube mounted to the side of the cut hub this is again a really professional grade system i realize not everyone is going to you know get into all this and all this fancy stuff but you could set up something you know you could use the dewalt crown stops i've used those for many years and they work just fine you could also put masking tape on the base of your saw and then ca glue little jigs to it so that way whenever you're done with the jig just rip off the masking tape and the ca glue is not on your miter saw you know i was gluing stuff to my saw and then someone told me in the comments hey why don't you just put masking tape first and then glue to that you know why where do they come up with this stuff because they're geniuses i don't know but just there's other ways around it where you don't have to have something so professional but have a jig set up where you can make repeatable cuts so the next tip is going to sound really basic but it needs to be said because it needed to be told to me years ago and that is going to be let the saw do the work you know let this motor do the work for you if you have to put a lot of force down on the material you know that's a good sign that you're ready to get your blade changed if that blade is not just you know cutting through it like a hot knife through butter right like diablo says you know it's probably time to get a blade change and as far as blade change frequency it's really going to depend on what materials you're cutting you know like i mentioned i cut mdf and pine a lot i don't really have to change blades that often i can get six months out of a blade like this believe it or not if i was doing hardwood flooring i'm probably gonna have to change this thing like once a month because it's just going to get doled out from that hardwood so that's up to you to decide blade change frequency but let that motor do the work if you're having to really you know put some strength down to get through that material you know what you're also going to get is what's called deflection which is where the blade is going to like wiggle its way through the material and you're not going to get as clean of a cut as you could you know this blade needs to go straight through the material so when your pieces come together they're going to be crisp if you're having to dig through it that blade is wobbling back and forth that's what deflection is you'll hear that come up a lot in trim carpentry deflection the blade is deflecting from left to right and it's digging its way through the work piece rather than cutting through it so that is a big tip let the blade do the work and that goes hand in hand with having a sharp blade so another tip that kind of goes hand in hand with letting the motor do the work is just to take it slow when you're making these cuts always keep it in the back of your mind just take it slow it's not a race to get through this piece of material you just want to get the cleanest cut you can get so you say how slow should i take it well that's going to be up to the the user of the saw to get a feel for it and it's going to be obviously different for something like mdf versus you know like a hardwood like red oak so you're just going to have to get a feel for that but it's pretty easy to pick up on you know you don't obviously don't want to spend like 30 seconds cutting a piece but you also don't want to just cut a piece of hardwood like in a split second so there's a there's a balance there if you ever try to cut something really quick i'm sure you noticed that the ends are all chewed up so just take that into account and then the last tip i want to give you guys is just as you're done with that cut just wait till the blade has stopped spinning before you raise it up so for example if i'm making a cut right here and let's say you know for the sake of the video i'm not going to turn the saw on but let's say that you know i just cut through a piece i'm going to let that blade completely stop and then i'm going to raise it up you know the only time i would raise the blade before it stops spinning is if i pulled the work piece away okay so like if this level right here was my work piece and let's say i just cut a miter on it the blade's still spinning i could pull that away and then raise it because what happens is if you raise up that blade while that work piece is still in that position those teeth are only made to cut in one direction and as they come up they're going to chip out against that piece of material and obviously you don't want that you want the cleanest cut you can get so there you have it guys those are my tips these are things that i think about constantly i mean every day that i'm doing this kind of work i'm looking for all these things to be in place all these things are running through my mind and if one of them is off you know it's going to throw me off and i'll quickly notice it as i'm starting the install so i just thought i would make this video and help as many people out there who are interested in this stuff as i can if you have any questions or comments leave them down below and if you guys want to send me pictures to diagnose your issues i'm more than happy to do it although i may take a while to respond because i do run a business full time and i respond to the people who pay me faster than the people who don't so you guys understand that but i do like to help out and i like to see the problem and fix it thanks so much for watching and i'll see you guys on the next one all right and if you stuck around this long in the video i'll kind of let you guys know what i've been up to um i haven't really been making videos because i've been trying to kind of learn more about fitness i know that sounds funny but i've been feeling like garbage lately now now i'm feeling better but before i try to learn about this fitness stuff i was just feeling like just trash really i mean i thought you know i'm in shape but really it's it's deceiving you know i just have really skinny genetics i guess if you will you know you can be skinny and still be out of shape that's basically what i was so you know without getting into the whole thing i just took a lot of time to kind of learn about it you know health and fitness and take care of myself you know i'm not trying to be some big buff guy my genetics won't even allow that i don't even want that but basically just feel better eat better food and put on some muscle mass while i'm at it that's really the goal it does feel like we're camping the truck backed up with all this windows open and stuff and um you know i've been doing some cardio back here some unique cardio i want to show you guys and it's it's pretty cool so we'll go back here to the trampoline and check it out but before i do that i just want to let you guys know this literally just came in while i was making that video it's a box of the walkie t's we get a lot of questions about these but there they are there's a shipment of them medium through 2xl i think they're here if you want to order one ashley will ship you guys one has to be the u.s if you want to do another country email her on the website she might be able to figure it out but let's go check out this health and fitness stuff i've been into all right so this is chief he's a golden retriever we call him golden boy pup up and chiefy boy is pretty much what i call him but he's pretty cool yeah he's a good dog and uh this is my gym right here you know some people go to the gym some people go to you know go on a run go on the treadmill but i can really burn some calories on this trampoline with this blank skateboard and just doing tricks so this has no grip tape so can you have a seat for me all right so here we go this is a workout [Applause] one more been about 10 minutes [Applause] okay i'll take that we'll see you on the next video

Channel: Finish Carpentry TV

Views: 205,365

Keywords: finish, carpentry, finishcarpentry, trim, work, trimwork

Id: 0ENgFb8EML8

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021