Table Saw - Ripping Long Boards
Вставка
- Опубліковано 4 бер 2021
- Theatre Safety Training
Short Video Series
Cal State LA
Ripping full length (16' long) 1x12 or 1x10 pine into 1x3 for flat and scenery construction and 1x6 for platform construction.
Video Version 2.0
0:10 - Introduction
1:11 - Why rip 1x12 into 1x3 when you can buy 1x3 from the lumber yard?
4:37 - The Pusher and the Catcher roles in ripping long stock
6:02 - The Outfeed Table
8:45 - Best Technique for Ripping Long Boards
10:51 - Remember to always check lumber for nails, screws, staples, etc.
12:17 - Sample Cuts with View of the Pusher
14:15 - Demonstrating Using Support Stands on the Pusher's Side
16:40 - Responsibilities of the Catcher
17:54 - Testing Lumber for Weak Spots and Knots
18:58 - Production Efficiency
19:39 - Sample Cuts with View of Lumber Falling Beyond the Outfeed Table
21:21 - Side View of Sample Cuts
24:12 - Remember to Always Use the Dust Collector During Any Cutting
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Cal State LA
Department of Theatre and Dance
College of Arts & Letters
A&L Productions
This is a fantastic video. You answered all my questions. After watching you, I went ahead and ripped my first 1"x12" x10' boards smoothly and safely!
This was a big deal for me. Your perfect instructions literally gave me the confidence to do it.
Thank you!
Great video Madame , greetings from Chile!
Thanks
Thank you for taking time to teach. Being a beginner, I would not be comfortable using this technique because I would think I could eyeball this. But this seems like techniques for the people who already have experience ripping on a regular basis. Also I see you push through with your hands and not a push board. I would never do that. Another non-newbie technique and comfort with the table saw. Thank you again for producing content. Be well.
We use the guideline “under 3 inches wide and you should use a push stick”. And I am ripping to 2.5” wide. So going against my own rule and guideline, yes.
Without a catcher, you have slightly less control with a push stick, especially if you are new and push the lumber more cautiously. Two solutions: get a catcher so you can use a push stick, or make a bigger outfeed table to support the lumber. A full-length outfeed table for 16 foot boards would require yet another 16 feet beyond that for the boards to land onto the floor for continuous ripping. Take whatever pieces mentioned that you align with and adapt them to the specific needs of your shop or facility. 👍🏻
At 14:30 I was thinking to myself that you could probably grab the wood several feet from the end without using the support too, thereby preventing that very deep bow and having to lift the end as high as you had to with the first board, but then you inadvertently did it yourself with the next pass, only really using the support as a marker for where to grab the board!
This video, the comments and your responses to them are a MINE of information for me as a relative newbie who is hoping to cut some French cleats out of a couple of full sheets of ply soon on a Triton Workcentre with an extension table on the side, so pretty much the only thing it has going for it is that it has enough support for the width. Oh, and I have enough supports for another sheet of ply to act as outfeed table. Your ripping is totally next level though!👌 It's given me lots of ideas and, like someone else has said, the confidence that I could also try it. 💪
I see a lot of the theatre students going to the end of the board but really about the 2/3 point from the saw to the board end is the best place to start.
I tend to not even use the support but I know the support helps beginners so I included it in this video.
Thank you for the positive feedback!
Love your video! It explained the process perfectly, including how to walk in the board. I loved that you inspected each piece too. I'm just now delving into the land of saws. Can you give a suggestion for using a portable table saw outdoors? I'll be doing my work outside and will most likely not have a helper. My thinking which is probably wrong is to use a saw horse as the catcher. Thanks!
Contractor saws never have enough support for long board rips. I have a couple videos here of me working with my 1970s craftsman contractor type saw at home, including some demonstrations of how not to safely manage log boards without an outfeed table. I use mine outdoors in the driveway in front of the garage most of the time.
You’d be better off with a couple sawhorses with a sheet of plywood on them to catch. A single or multiple sawhorses alone will too often get caught by the bending long board and fall over or otherwise interrupt the cut. I have a couple folding tables that I will use. Gotta put them right up against the saw for best support. The tables are shorter than the saw table height which can create other issues.
I do way too many things solo when I should have a helper.
Hacks for Using an Under-Powered Table Saw
ua-cam.com/video/SUM0cIs30h8/v-deo.html
Here’s me using the old table saw outdoors.
Bad Choices on the Table Saw 1
ua-cam.com/video/G8mjwUzmH3Q/v-deo.html
And a short clip from that of a very dangerous thing that I do at home.
It takes practice trying to keep a board tight to the fence that long and from that far away from the table. Adding a featherboard helps but would need to custom mount when stock is covering the miter slot.
Definitely something to work on after building basic competency on the table saw. Not a beginner task.
There are other options for more support on infeed and outfeed if you have the space and production warrants it. Yup I could also involve more persons as infeed and outfeed support. This is my preferred compromise method with our shop size and for me ripping solo.
Using a feather board to rip lots of 1x12 into 1x3 also isn’t practical, since you Star with an 11-1/2” wide board each time and each cut makes it narrower. Not gonna take the time to adjust that between cuts when I want to quickly rip a dozen planks into 1x3.
For scenic flat construction, having even a 1/16” or slightly more variance in accuracy of ripped board is not going to impact the final product. You don’t want wavy cuts for sure! It is just pine and rough construction methods for most scenic work.
You can also rip starting from SMALLER dimensional lumber start, like ripping a 2x4 down to 1x3, it's also easier to maneuver a 2x4, but warp and bowing are common in smaller dimensional lumber.
If you get a chance try Matsushita Saw Blades, best blades in the world!
I’m an artist painter and am trying to do my own stretcher bars and crossbars and then wrap my canvas….. I have a Dewalt jobsite table saw and am quite scared of using it from kickback… I do have a zero clearance board that I bought, feather board, changed the original saw to a much better one…. But I am afraid of kickback…… I know nothing of woodworking… but seeing you alone ripping these long pieces of wood I wonder why I so afraid….. You do have an out feed table…. I don’t….. and you do have a SawStop as equipment…….. please. If you have any suggestions I would appreciate. Merci from Quebec, Canada.
Are you planning to make your canvas frames out of 2x2? And more specifically, hardwood 2x2 or similar for longevity and stability?
I do have some recommendations when over-working an under-powered table saw. But first, making sure your riving knife is present will help you reduce kickback from the wood binding on the blade. Usually with an under-powered saw, the binding actually stops the motor, trips the reset button on the motor if it has one, or can trip a circuit breaker as the motor goes into overload, but it can also cause kickback. The more frequent cause of kickback is your wood deviating from your ripping fence, which again the riving knife helps prevent that. Many home user models and job site models don't have a separate riving knife. The riving function is built into the blade guard, so if yours is that way, always use the blade guard because the riving knife part of it is essential for safety.
At home, my setup is ridiculously pathetic. I don't have space for a big cabinet saw or an outfeed table. And I have an underpowered Craftsman direct drive table saw from the 1970s. So ripping long boards or long pieces of plywood is a challenge, especially alone. I do a few things that aren't considered safe and reduce the accuracy of the ripping in order to compensate for my under-equipped setup.
Make sure you get yourself a proper ripping blade, one that has something in the right range of positive rake/hook and one that has fewer teeth. A typical rip blade for a 10" table saw only has 24 teeth, but not all blades with 24 teeth are rip blades. I find you can't get a good ripping blade at Home Depot or Lowe's or any of the local home craftsman places. I am a big fan of Tenryu blades, but those typically cost $80-100+ so they might be more than you want to spend. Don't opt for a "combination" blade if you will be ripping 2x hardwood stock. Change the blade to a ripping blade when doing those cuts, and go back to a combination blade when cutting hardboard or laminates or other materials. Definitely go to a 60 tooth or 80 tooth blade for cutting plexiglas.
Do some test cuts on short pieces, especially if you are ripping through 2x stock (Is Canadian lumber sized in Imperial feet and inches, or in metric sizes?) When I find the saw is working too hard, I raise the blade higher than the usual recommended position. The higher the blade, the steeper the cut angle, so the less lumber to be cut on every pass. This helps an under-powered machine get through thicker stock. You also have to push the wood through more slowly when your saw exhibits signs of being overworked. Do test cuts until you get everything in the right arrangement of blade height and feed speed.
The SawStop isn't going to necessarily reduce your kickback potential. Kickback is usually due to operator error and rushing through a cut or something that can be avoided. Occasionally it is due to the piece of lumber twisting or warping during cuts in ways you can't predict. The SawStop that I have at work and in the video is also a 3-phase machine, so that extra power does tend to result in fewer kickback scenarios related to pushing the saw to its limits. But I am even happy with my home Craftsman piece-of-crap after I put a Tenryu blade on it. It has never worked better. Even a cheap table saw with the right blade can do amazing things.
(Also, one of the commenters on this video spoke about a moment in the video where they thought the sounds indicated imminent kickback. They weren't actually operating the saw and listening to the sounds and present in the room to know, so they are mis-interpreting the sounds that they heard on the video. At that moment in the video, I was feeding too fast, and the saw was starting to show signs of over-working, possibly with the lumber binding on the blade some or I was going through some knots in the lumber, or both. I even commented about it in the video. So I slowed down my feed rate and adapted to the needs in the moment, and that particular moment was never one of imminent kickback. It was a potential moment of the wood binding on the blade and the riving knife and stopping the saw blade. Even on the 3-phase SawStop machine, that does happen some.)
FYI, I made a video ripping some long boards with the contractor's style saw that I have at home. No outfeed table. Crappy original rip fence. And I demonstrated a couple of things that I do to compensate. I do demonstrate one that I consider very unsafe, but I am pretty clear about that in the video.
ua-cam.com/video/SUM0cIs30h8/v-deo.html
@@calstatelaalproductions2358 hey, thanks for the video. I don't see a lot of videos on ripping long boards (at least UA-cam doesn't show me, even if I search for it) but I did see an article about it and they suggested using a half fence... This is a fence that is attached to your fence that ends about half way through the blade so if your long board does decide to pinch, or veer away from the blade towards the fence, it will have the room without creating risk. This must be something that they do exclusively in the UK because I've seen nothing on UA-cam... And my UA-cam must ignore the UK? Anyways what I am wondering is this... Does ripping long boards reduce the risk, or severity of kickback? I have a DeWalt jobsite saw so maybe mines not powerful enough to really go too crazy as you said in your comment (which thank you, wow what a load of information. So great). But what I'm wondering is do you experience a lot of kickback sawing down long boards? I use a feather pro featherboard which helps to keep the boards from coming back, but how severe for the most part would kickback really be on a board as heavy as say an 8' long 2"x6"? I know you're not a psychic but I'd assume you've got a lot more boards than I have. Thank, great insight I appreciate it.
My experience with modern job site saws is limited, but I think 2” stock would be pushing the limits on most. Especially if it is a battery powered one. A proper and clean ripping blade will help tremendously though. Check out my video with my 1970s Craftsman contractor style saw.
ua-cam.com/video/SUM0cIs30h8/v-deo.html
The added fence you are describing sounds like when you want to make repeated cross-cuts with the miter gauge and you add an auxiliary fence to the rip fence that ends where the miter stock comes into contact with the blade.
I can’t imagine a situation in ripping where I would want the fence to end halfway through the blade. You’d want to increase the fence length for accuracy not shorten it.
My experience with ripping long boards is that it’s more likely to to pinch and bind the blade than do a major kickback. And with underpowered saws, that results in tripping breakers or other safety resets. Drift from the fence and lack of a splitter or riving knife would be the greater culprits in kickback. Also the weight and mass of the larger long boards seems to have enough inertia moving forward to minimize kickback in normal, safe operation.
We have dramatically different perspectives on what constitutes a "long board". For me, 8ft is a pain.
I would agree that 8ft qualifies as long. The approaches I demonstrate with the 16ft long boards are all transferable to other lengths, and it’s probably easier to maintain accuracy with 8ft and under. But 16ft is the maximum length for most commercially available solid lumber, and in stagecraft it’s good to learn to rip the entire length.
@@calstatelaalproductions2358 Oh, I get that and kudos to you! I may never face such length but I'll be more confident in what challenges I have. Thanks!