How to use a JOBSITE Table Saw for FINE WOODWORKING Projects

today i'm going to do the most requested video i'm going to talk about my little table saw and how i make it work for fine woodworking projects this is the dewalt dw 745 and they do not make this model anymore but they replaced this model with the dw7485 it's not a perfect replacement though because the dw7485 can only hold an eight and a quarter inch blade while this one holds a ten inch blade that will probably become an issue if you're wanting to rip thicker material or if you're wanting to resaw wider material or if you're going to be building some jigs like sleds where you have to add a three-quarter inch base that will limit the thickness of the material you can cut with those jigs so i think a better comparable model is actually the dwe 7491rs because that one can hold a 10 inch blade and the 7491 is actually probably better than this saw because that one can hold a dado blade and this one can't the arbor is too short so what sold me on this dewalt saw was the rack and pinion fence and that saw has the same fence so i'm assuming it has the same awesome features before we get into why this fence is so awesome and the other features let me tell you how you can get amazing perks just for purchasing it through today's sponsor home depot and their loyalty program pro extra if you're anything like me you probably make multiple home depot runs in the middle of a project so why not get rewarded for making those purchases when you sign up for a home depot pro extra membership every dollar you spend gets you closer to exclusive perks like pro extra dollars or tool rental perks best part it's free to sign up and regardless of spend level or trade all pro extra members get rewarded just for shopping members also have access to exclusive deals on products and services so you can save money on the items you need for your projects or your business all these perks are super easy to manage using the home depot app where you can track all of your offers and also keep track of all your spending simply scan your virtual id that's displayed in the app at checkout and you're on your way to earning your rewards this is also awesome for tracking your purchases at checkout you can assign that purchase to a specific job you're working on and you can easily keep track of how much you're spending this is an awesome loyalty program built for pros but anyone can sign up for free so if you're interested in learning some more check out the link below to sign up for pro extra all right so what's so great about this fence once you set it square it stays square and that's because of the rack and pinion fence on both the front and the back when you rotate this knob here to adjust the fence you can see that both the front and the back are moving in unison so you know that once you set it square it will remain square but it probably won't come square out of the box you will need to make an adjustment and you can do that with this little black screw in the fence you unscrew it and then you dial in the fence either to the right or to the left and you get it in line with the miter slot here's why that's a really cool feature sometimes i have to remove the fence so let's say i am using my crosscut sled and i have a stop block to the left of the blade and i want to cross cut a piece that's longer than how far my fence can go so i could just take off the fence and then have my piece against the stop block without anything blocking its way you can also remove the fence from the right side of the blade to the left side of the blade but that's not something that i ever really do now back to those black setup screws and why they're so cool is when you're putting the fence back on all you have to do is slide the fence over the screws there's one in the back also and then lock it down since you know that the fence was square when you set it up with those screws every time you take the fence on and off you know it's going to be square it is super awesome another really cool feature on the fence is the flip down support so if you extend the fence past the top of the table there is no support for your work piece here this isn't really an issue with thicker materials but if you are cutting thinner materials like underlayment your piece can possibly get stuck underneath the fence as it's riding along and it would completely mess up your cut or possibly hurt you really badly so this flip down support easily supports the piece as you're cutting it through but if your saw doesn't have a flip down support like this there are always options you can simply just take a piece of scrap and clamp it to your fence this achieves the same thing like the flip down support you can now safely run thinner material along the fence the fence that came with the saw is awesome but the miter gauge that came with the saw didn't really work out for me so there are a ton of options for great miter gauges out there i happen to really like this one but that brings me to a problem with this saw the miter slots these miter slots are very wide they are wider than three-quarter inches which is wider than a typical cabinet saw because of this i have to make a lot of adjustments to some of the accessories that i use with the saw for example this miter gauge this miter bar is fully adjustable to accommodate different width miter slots but since these slots were so wide i had to crank down on it like almost past its limit in order to get it to slide without any slop i also have this tenon jig and same thing with the miter gauge the miter bar was adjustable for different width miter slots except this one did not adjust enough to fit these super wide slots but we can always make it work i use something called draw slide tape and this is a tape that's usually used to help draws slide and glide smoothly so it just added a little bit of thickness and it kept it gliding nice and smooth in the miter slots there's another really big problem with these miter slots fresh out of the box they are not a consistent width along their length so this became apparent to me when i made my first cross-cut sled and i made my own miter bars and they kept binding and getting stuck super frustrating experience but i realized it wasn't me it's the plastic coating on top of the saw so i took some high grit sandpaper and wrapped it around a block and then sanded the inside of the miter slots making sure to rub it along the sides and after doing this i never had any issues with binding now this was my specific saw this might not be a problem on yours but just be aware that if you find that to be a problem this is how to fix it also if you're having trouble with some binding a little paste wax goes a long way now here's probably the biggest flaw on this saw the top is not completely flat but as you can see from my previous projects despite this you can still make accurate cuts on it you just need to be aware of a few things like squaring up the blade first of all you never want to reference the throat plate when you're squaring your blade you always want to reference the top of the saw so make sure that you're using a square long enough that will extend out to the top of the saw and you also don't want to put this on a tooth you want to make sure it's on a flat part of the blade now here's where you can see the problem with the top not being flat on the right side of the blade it's nice and square now without making any adjustments to the blade tilt if i swap the square to the left side of the blade you can see there is a slight gap so how do i deal with this when i am cutting material the piece that i want is usually the piece that's in between the blade and the fence so when i'm squaring up the blade i always make sure to reference the right side of the blade i always use a push stick or a push block to put pressure down on the piece that's being cut so the cutting angle is probably going to reference that flat square bottom that's on the right side of the blade if you get what i mean now the piece that's between the blade and the fence is perfectly square and i expected it to be because that's where i set up my blade to be square you might think that the offcut piece that was on the left hand side of the blade is not going to be square but boom really perfect there is no light shining through so the discrepancy in the top of the saw not being flat makes absolutely no difference in the accuracy of your cuts annoying as it may be in the setup process when you're switching from each side of the blade you're like what is happening here just make sure to set it up on the right hand side and then you'd be good to go but if you ever find yourself in a situation where you just cannot get a square cut here's a cool little tip since the problem is probably because of the flatness in the top you can just create a flat top on your saw by using some scrap plywood if you push some plywood through and stop midway you can then clamp it down and use it as a base to make super square cuts if you're ever having problems you can see how with this extra material on top the bladel looks square from both sides because this material is flat but generally i don't have an issue with the lack of flatness on this top because i always reference the right side of the blade alternatively if you're jointing material and you're still having a problem with the squareness of your blade you can do something called the up down method of jointing you may have seen this on a jointer where people call it the in out method well instead of in and out this is up and down i'll explain the most important thing when doing a panel glue up is flushness on the edges of consecutive work pieces no matter the angle the best way to achieve this flushness is to make sure the edges are square to each other but if that's not working out for you all you need to do is make sure the angles next to each other are complementary once the pieces are together they will look exactly the same on top despite the angles of the edges i'll do an exaggerated example here you can see that this blade is not square so when i cut the material the edge is not square either now if i want to edge join this to another piece all i need to do is rip the next piece making sure the angle is going the other way using the up down method the first board i cut with the good face up and the second board i cut with the good face down now when you butt these two pieces up next to each other they are completely flush even though the angle was not square so what would happen if you didn't do the up down method and you just cut all the good faces up there would be a huge gap between your boards and that's how you make barrels and curved objects not a flat panel so that's how you joint on a table saw when you can't get the blade square enough using the up down method so sometimes squareness just isn't as important as you think it is obviously this is a super exaggerated example and you wouldn't want to purposefully set your blade like this but if your blade is set to like 89.8 degrees instead of 90 it'll be totally fine as long as you do the up down method but speaking of squaring up the blade i've actually gotten this question a ton of times some people who have this saw they say that it's not possible for them to even get their blade to 90 like it's stuck on 89.8 so here's how you fix that behind the blade wheel there's something called the bevel lock screw this screw is attached to a stop cam which is adjustable to the right or left if you rotate it to the left you see the gap gets bigger and if you rotate it to the right the gap gets smaller so if your blade can't go past 89 it's probably because your stop cam is too far to the right to set it up loosen it all the way creating the largest gap in the cam that you can then square your blade up on top and then lock the bevel lock lever now that the blade is for sure at 90 you readjust the stop cam to the correct position by tightening the bevel lock screw until it hits the bevel lock lever now your blade will always stop at 90 because you set that stop in the correct position the same goes for 45. if you can't get it past 44 or whatever then it's probably the stop cam that's on that side and you can set it so that it stops at exactly 45 every single time while we're on the topic of questions people ask me some people say that my riving knife looks like it's lower than theirs well this is adjustable you can adjust the height with the knob that's inside the blade cavity simply unscrew it then to pull it out you have to push the knob in towards the blade and then you can raise or lower it they say to keep it at a higher raised setting for through cuts but i always keep it on the lower setting because i don't always do through cuts and it would just be annoying to have to constantly switch fixing all the little quirks that are inherently built into the saw definitely improved my work but probably the biggest thing that you can do to up your game with this little job side saw is to build a surround for it like this i built this really early on in my woodworking journey so it's really crude and rudimentary but it gets the job done having good outfeed on longer pieces is a must and having the extra support out to the left is also super helpful too not only in storing all of your things but for to help support your work pieces and jigs the biggest question that i get asked with my table saw surround was if i would build it again would i extend the infeed out so the in feed on a jobsite table saw is one of the biggest issues to work around there is only about five inches of infeed so you have to think about that when you're making your jigs and everything so some people think that if you bring out the surround out the front that gives you a larger infeed and it can open up some worlds to you but i'm not sure if that is a good idea if you extend this around you are going to then limit your ability to reach these essential controls that are on the saw whether that being the blade height or the blade tilt but most importantly the power button if there's some sort of emergency and you need to stop the saw you're going to have to reach out and under hold on let me put a plank here you're then going to have to reach under this and try to find it to knock it off where you could just simply hit it with your knee when it's like this so if you could figure out a way to extend those functions out towards the side of the infeed then maybe it's a good idea but i would definitely not recommend limiting your reach to these essential functions when it comes to working around the short in feed when it comes to making jigs i just factor it into the design like my cross cut sled the depth between fences is just under 14 inches with a cabinet saw you can make that a lot deeper but it just does not seem wise to make it deeper than that because i would have to bring it all the way out here to start any cut that would be deeper than that so that just doesn't seem like a wise thing to do so i just factor it into my designs and i work around the short in feed and it's been working totally fine the biggest problem with having a short end feed though is when you want to rip long pieces you have to start the cut all the way back here and all of this material has nothing supporting it on the edge so this could be a little wonky cut or a little bit dangerous so what you could do is you could add an auxiliary fence to your existing fence and there are multiple ways that you can attach this onto your fence like you can use these dovetail clamps that will hide into dovetail slots inside the wood so that it won't interfere with the wood sliding through and there's a ton of different other clamping options for something like this and then when you run your material through it then is supported at the infeed and everything will go nice and smooth or using a feather board works really well to keep your boards nice and straight as you're pushing them along just make sure to set this up where it's putting pressure in front of the blade and not next to the blade moving on to blades which blade do i use so i use a thin kerf combo blade for most of my work and thin kerf is the takeaway there a full curved blade tends to bog down this saw especially in my underpowered shop so the only time that i'll switch to a full kerf blade is when i'm doing joinery so the full kerf blade that i have is a ripping blade and the teeth have a flat top grind on them which means the top of them is flat as opposed to a combo blade or a general purpose blade the teeth are like pointy on the ends alternate top bevel and when you're doing joinery you just want to have the cleanest bottom cut that you could possibly get so that's the only time that i'll switch to a full kerf blade and it doesn't bog down the saw because i'm usually removing very little amounts of material when i'm doing joinery for joinery and other fine woodworking on this table saw the best way to make it work for you is to use jigs so my favorite is the cross cut sled the cross cut sled is probably the best jig that you can make for the saw you can get consistently accurate cuts on here and the best part about it is that once you make it you've created a base for a whole host of other jigs you could put angle jigs on here you can put a box joint jig on here i even use this to cut a round draw front you can do so many things with a crosscut sled now the only thing to be mindful here when you're making this or when you're using it is to always use the same blade now i only use my thin kerf combo blade with this sled because i want the zero clearance to always remain zero clearance now if i want to do some detailed joinery and stuff and i want to use my my full kerf flat tooth grind blade then i switch out to a different sled where the curve is the same thickness as that blade another great jig is a taper jig which can also act as a jointer jig and it's essential if you don't have a jointer like me another great jig to make is a tenon jig i showed the other one that i had before that goes in the miter slot but here's a super simple one that you can make that goes over your fence i used this recently on a project i didn't film where i made these castle joints these were super easy to cut once it was set up correctly so that's how i make this little job side saw work for me straight out of the box you will need to make some tweaks but once you dial everything in and figure out all the little workarounds it is the best saw that you can get in this price range so i hope this was helpful for anyone who's ever asked me about the saw or for anyone who's having issues with theirs huge thank you to home depot for sponsoring this video thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you on the next one perfect timing my kids just came home as promised if you stuck around to the end of this video you can enter to win a 1 000 gift card to the home depot courtesy of this week's sponsor home depot and their loyalty program pro extra a thousand dollars is a more than enough to get you a brand new dewalt table saw and supplies for your next project so all you need to do is comment down below the next project that you plan on working on and how that gift card is going to help you get that job done that's it then in three weeks i'm going to pick a winner at random so awesome of the home depot to do this i love being able to give back to you guys so huge thank you to home depot for making this happen good luck in case anyone's wondering what the deal with this auxiliary fence was i didn't have a piece that was long enough or wide enough to show as an example so i double dictate them together and that's why i didn't make the dovetail slots in them to show you guys how to do it so sometimes there's reasons behind why i do things hello a better comparable model is actually the dwe is someone here mic check hello hello and welcome to movie phone brought to you by the new york times and 102.7 wnew

Channel: 3x3Custom - Tamar

Views: 976,901

Keywords: table saw, table saw tips, table saw tricks, table saw jig, table saw hacks, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, tips and tricks, woodworking hack, dewalt tablesaw, jobsite table saw, which table saw, Jobsite saw for fine woodworking, Woodworking table saw

Id: 22oqr6o5z-w

Length: 21min 57sec (1317 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022