DON'T CUT YOUR FINGERS OFF! Make The Optimum Push Block

good to see you fellow crafts rights and good to see that you're interested in retaining as many of your digits as you possibly can now you may have seen this prototype push stick in some of my previous videos and after a lot of testing and trial and error i finally decided that it's ready to give to you and your shop free of charge so why did i decide to build my own push stick when there are plenty of designs out there i mean they're all over the place part of the reason was for the longest time i've been using inspire woodcraft's design which was great i really loved it it did have one or two bugs the big ones being that it has kind of a high center of gravity with your hand all the way up here and then the round over on it really encourages it to roll instead of staying flat on top of the work piece you have you have to work to keep it flat but nothing that i would kick it out of bed for eating crumbs for if you know what i mean until this happened while i was using it on the table saw now that's not inspired woodcraft's fault at all this was probably user error i made these holes a little larger than i should have which didn't leave much meat here so small amount of wood means weakness it breaks but that got me thinking about other designs and i came up with the one that you've seen me use for a while now that's really enough of me talking about it though let's actually build one and then i'll go over why i designed it the way that i did and some of the features that it has that i think make it maybe a little bit better than some of the competition but to each their own you know let the work begin [Music] [Applause] i want to make two of these at the exact same time so i'm going to use the old tape and ca trick i didn't invent this this isn't new but it's a good one now this is overkill but i want to make sure that i don't accidentally glue the two pieces of wood together now i'll just put some ca glue activator on the other stick them down okay now that we've got the stock ready the first thing we're going to do is drill out these holes in the center part to do that we're going to use a half inch forstner bit and a one and three quarter inch forstner bit now i know there's going to be a bunch of comments about how the metric system is better so give me one second we're going to be drilling a 12.7 millimeter hole and a 44.4 millimeter hole i'm just giving you guys crap we all know at its core metric is better everyone in the us uses imperial everyone in canada uses imperial a lot of british carpenters use imperial until the whole world switches to it i'm gonna have a hard time switching too so bear with me [Music] so drop it quick change time would help if i turn the dust collection [Music] on well that didn't work so good all right now that we got these holes cut out i'm going to use a jigsaw to clear out this waste with a with a clean wood blade so it'll get the best you can with a jigsaw you're never going to get a super nice cut but it'll do the job all right just need to clean up some of these cuts with a file get down to the line also help with some of the transitions in between the rounds and the flats [Music] yeah it's a lot better okay so with the inside cut out and refined so it's nice and smooth the transitions are good we can take it over the bandsaw and cut the outside [Music] so that looks very assassin's creed doesn't it just like that one becomes two now you may have noticed that i only finished these edges that's pretty much where the hand goes these ones i left the bandsaw mark on it because i've found that doing that actually gives it enough tooth to really kind of grip the stock you can still glue sandpaper here if you want to to give it a little bit of extra grip but i found the band saw leaves a rough enough surface that it's got some it's got some grip to it now that we got this all cleaned up really all that's left to do is take a round over bit and clean up these inside edges i'm going to keep the outside edges flat because that's the part that references the work piece and i don't want it to roll like some of the other ones have a tendency to do so i'm just going to round over these because that's where your hand goes oh and i'm gonna break these edges with some sandpaper [Music] oh yeah yeah that feels good so not a pro pretending to be a pro tick if you ever have any of these sanding sponges and they wear out don't throw them away they work really good as backers for other pieces of sandpaper especially for breaking edges alright so we have two finished push sticks you might think that i designed them the way that i did because i was playing assassin's creed at the time or it was halloween and i was inspired by coffins or i was watching star wars and it kind of looks like a millennium falcon or some other starship but i can promise you it was none of those things there were just a few key features that i wanted in a push stick and this was the design and shape that facilitated it so what are those features why did i make this the way that i did the first thing is i made it out of plywood hardwood has a tendency to break a little easier than plywood because plywood has the alternating grain pattern now that doesn't mean it's infallible or unbreakable but this was more user air than the actual plywood if ida left more meat here it probably would have been okay this large hole in the center section makes it really easy to grab from either side if you have little hands or big hands and it also makes it very easy to hang on things like at your bandsaw your table saw your jointer your planer wherever you're gonna use a push stick it's very easy to hang and one of the important things about safety tools is they need to be accessible they need to be right there otherwise you're not going to use them that's why i wear these bandanas i'm notoriously bad about not going and getting my respirator or dust mask when i need to but if i have this around my neck i have no excuse not to do this if you're going to have safety implements in your shop and you should make sure that they're accessible and nearby this center section also gives it another feature which is it's very easy to hold while you're manipulating stock at the table saw i can hold my push stick manipulate this and then when it's time for the stick slide it on through this shape also makes it so that your hand it's tall enough so that your hand is well away from the stock as you're sliding it through which is a must for a push stick it has two different depths on the sides one side for thick stock the other for really thin when it comes time to do quarter inch or eighth inch this is too big and it actually gets in the way that's why i wanted to include small little teeth on one side larger teeth on the other it can also be used on its side which is great for bands that work you can even lay it flat on the table this angle these are actually parallel to each other and that makes it so that you naturally put pressure on the work piece instead of having to crank down with downward force just simply pushing it through puts ample pressure along this surface and then one of the big ones for me is you're pushing the stock through with this as a stick or block instead of pulling it through like some other designs but i'll actually show you that at the table saw it'll make more sense so what do i mean by pulling versus pushing the work through so this is kind of your typical push block design this isn't targeted at anyone there are a lot of people out there that make push blocks designed this way where it's something to hold on to with a little nub to grab the piece but the point is when you're pushing the work piece through you're naturally going to hold this in the middle maybe at the end but more than likely you're going to hold it in the middle by the time your hand reaches the blade so my hand is well over the blade now there's still a good three inches to be cut on this piece so i'm dragging it through the cut the blade is still cutting the wood while my hand is over it i personally don't like that that's why i designed this the way that i did so that by the time my hand reaches the blade or pretty close to it this is already finished cutting and i can just push it through or if i'm feeling extra squirrely and i don't even want to get my hand that close to it that's why i put these front teeth on i can push through or i can actually from a distance like a push block or a push stick dragging the work piece through the cut so you're pulling it through the cut pushing it through now that you've seen how easy these are to make and how they work it's my sincerest wish that you download a set of these plans for completely free from my website craftswrite.com and make some for yourself it's always good to have safety equipment in your shop because it's always a good idea to practice good technique you want to keep these for as long as you can with that being said keep up the good work and we'll see in the next video one becomes two isn't that a spice girls song when two become one fun fact that was my first concert ever spice world spice up your life [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Craftswright

Views: 165,215

Keywords: push block, push block diy, push block for jointer, push block plans, push block template pdf, cheap table saw push block, diy push block plans, table saw push block, push blocks for table saw, push stick, push stick design, push stick diy, push stick for table saw, push stick plans free, push stick template, adjustable push stick, woodworking push stick, craftswright, diy projects, do it yourself, homemade, how to, how to make, project, safety, saw, tips, tools, tutorial

Id: NOgtKbWjLlw

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020