Woodworking Myths and Useless Woodworking Hacks

hello everyone I'm called a cadet today I'm gonna do something a little different I get to show you some tips and tricks that don't work they're not unsafe they just don't work and I'm going to show you why and the reason I want to do this is because hopefully will stop some of these myths that keep perpetuating so let's have a look at some of these this test is on the table saw and I'm using an 80 tooth blade and what I've seen a lot lately is people claiming that if you put tape on top of the wood when you're cutting with your table saw you'll get a better cut and a table saw blade cuts first on the top so the very best cut with the table saw is on top of your wood and underneath where the blade exits the wood is where you get the tear out so if you were going to put tape anywhere you would put it underneath but tape doesn't make any difference we've already done those tests and I'm going to do it again this time on top and you're going to be able to see the difference so I'm going to do two things I'm going to put a zero and the zero means that there's no tape and then I'm going to put a one next to it and we'll cut through that one and we'll make a short show the difference of what that looks like okay and there's those two cuts and if you look you can see on this one there's some if I put it in the right you can see that there's some very tiny look and that's normal little tiny little splinters on there so that's what that cut looks like now let's take the tape off and if you look at the tape here look at this it's pulling the fibers off the wood okay there's the difference there's I've cut right through my he can't barely see a little mark of it there but there's the difference there's with tape right there and there's without tape and actually in this case you're actually getting a cleaner cut without tape than with tape so this whole tape thing on top of the wood on a table saw it's just it's just a myth I've been seeing this more frequently as well and that people making insert zero-clearance insert further miter saw and with a miter saw the blade cuts underneath first that's the first on the table saw it cuts on top first so when it cuts underneath first that's the best cut you can get and anybody who's ever laid hardwood floor will tell you that when you're cutting hardwood floor you put the good side down because that's where you get the best cut and you'll get tear out in the top and that's exactly the same thing that you'll hear from any carpenter they'll always tell you where the circular saw because they work these tools work both the same way they dig under like this under the wood circular saw the the best cut is when you put the face the good face down that's where you get the best cut so making a zero clearance shouldn't make any difference at all and we're going to prove that by taking I'm gonna take these right out and take them right out of there so there's no inserts at all then the second cut I'm going to make I'm going to put in the very best zero clearance you can get I'm actually going to lay a thin piece of plywood there and that will give you the best zero clearance you can get so we'll have a look at those okay you can see I've removed the insert altogether I'm going to put a zero let me see no I'm I'm maybe I'll make a make it two this time and a three so the twos going to be with nothing and the three will be with using the ultimate zero clearance now there's nothing unsafe about this you can see that the blade doesn't bottom out anywhere and whether you've got the inserts here or not wouldn't make any difference because it's always set so that it won't do that so I'm just gonna go ahead and make the first cut now remember we've got the same piece of wood and we've got the same blade okay I'm going to do the zero clearance and do that first and then we'll compare the results so it's going to lay that off to the side now the ultimate zero clearance fence is a piece of plywood because it makes it perfect it's exactly perfectly tight so we'll use that for our zero clearance we'll make that second cut okay there's the other one and we'll compare those okay there's our results from the miter-cut and remember we had two two was the first one now you're looking at right now the worst part of the cut this is where tear out will occur with the circular saw or with a sliding miter saw so but we're not really looking at this but still it's a very very nice clean cuts so let's flip this over if I can without disturbing there we go okay now here's the first cut that I made and that was with no insert at all that was like wide open and look at that beautiful crisp clean there's there's no tear out there at all and here's this is interesting here's with the zero clearance using the plywood as a zero clearance the perfect zero clearance you can get and look I don't know if you can see but there's actually a little bit of tear owed in there but oddly enough the zero clearance is actually worse which is unusual I would have thought it would be exactly the same but and that could be the wood but the point is there's almost no difference between either one of those they're both very clean which proves the point that zero clearance on the miter saw is just there's no point to it the next thing I want to talk about is bandsaw blades and there is a myth for many many years ago that you should round over the back of your bandsaw blades so that you're able to get a tighter cut when you're cutting circles or arcs and the way you do that typically is with a coarse stone like this you run the bandsaw and you do a little bit on each side of just of course just the back and if this is a bandsaw blade and I sort of cut it in half and I'm showing you the top of where I cut that in half and these are the teeth down here basically all you're rounding off is this little bit here and that little bit there now I used to do that for years and years and after a while I never saw any scientific evidence that I was making any kind of a difference and if anybody knows of anything we'd all learn from that but in the meantime that's not something that you're going to benefit from in fact the best way to save your bandsaw blades is to buy at least two blades have one thick blade and one thin blade the thick blade is for ripping and wrestling and the very thin blade is for only cutting circles and arcs now the problem with a big thick blade i I've done it and I've seen other people try and do it is cutting circles and arcs and what happens when you do that is you compromise the teeth on one side or another you forced them into the wood and what happens when these all these blades are just steel there's no carbide in these blades when you do that you force the blades into the wood it heats up the very tips of the blades on one side or the other wherever you're making that arc and at the very tips because there's not very much steel at the very tip of a tooth on a bandsaw blade those blades those teeth heat up so much sometimes that they start to melt and that's what makes them dull and when you touch a blade like that you can actually feel if you take a moment you can actually feel that the hook that part of the tooth that sort of grabs the wood on one side or the other is it it's not the same it doesn't grab your your skin as much and what that means is that bandsaw blade is dull and the way you can test that is when you're pushing wood through when you're pushing wood through if you with a brand new blade you'll notice that you can always push a wood straight through that's because both sides of the teeth are sharp if you have to put your wood at a bit of an angle to get a straight line that means one side if those bandsaw blade teeth are a dull it's a dull teeth one side er the other now you it'll still cut wood but it won't cut wood strength so if you want to save money on band saw blades here's what you do you get yourself a wide blade this is recorder you could be using 5/8 you could be using half-inch whatever your bandsaw takes but then get another very thin blade and this is a quarter-inch this blade I only ever use now for cutting circles and arcs and that's what it's designed to do it's a very thin blade and it cuts them easily this one is only for ripping and for Riesling and I only ever take do wood through it straight straight through and ever try cut arcs so take a moment to change blades when you need to and you can get away in a lot of cases you can get away with just two blades your blades will last you a lot longer you'll save time and you'll save money all you have to do is make sure that you change blades and you'll never have to worry about grinding down the back of your bandsaw blades this is such an old myth many years ago when we had Mike had batteries we used to have to put a bit a clamp on the drill so that you could drain the battery and rejuvenate with these new lithium ion batteries you don't have to worry about draining your battery just recharge it and use it as you normally would well that concludes my video for today and that's some of the myths that have perpetuated themselves and woodworking for years and years and years and some of the things that you can do to save time and money in the workshop I'm Colin canet for woodwork web thanks for watching you

Channel: WoodWorkWeb

Views: 295,211

Keywords: Woodworking Myths, Woodworking Hacks, woodworking tips, woodworking tricks, woodworking tips and tricks, woodworking class, woodworking tips and techniques, workshop tips and tricks, woodworking hack, workshop hacks, workbench hacks, woodworking tools, woodworking tips and tricks for beginners, woodworking tips & tricks for beginners, workshop hacks tips tricks, woodworking tip

Id: W4FaoSJD6Mg

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020