Q&A With George: Woodworking for Beginners

One of the things I really love about getting out and teaching is the interaction it provides with woodworkers. And we're gonna have a little of that interaction today. Greg is in the shop and he's just getting going, right? In a woodworking hobby, and he came here with some questions. So we're gonna fill those questions live and see what happens.

So Greg, I want you to talk a little bit about just kind of where you're at in your woodworking so people get a feel for your skill level and where you're getting going. Well, I'm just getting going on woodworking. Recently retired, right? I recently retired I just bought a new table saw, So I have some questions Congratulations Thank you I have some questions about setup. Okay.

And I also have some questions about my first project and some things that perhaps you could help me with that would have made it a little easier. All right, well, fire away and then we'll hopefully these questions they'll, you know it's one of these teacher admonitions. If you have a question somebody else probably has the same question. So all right, hit me what do you got? I mean, don't hit me but, First question is my new table saw I'm setting it up and the things I think are aligning the blade to the miter slots, aligning the fence and getting the blade vertical.

Yeah I'm not sure that there's other ones but those are the three that I can think of right now three big ones, yeah And I was wondering if there's a specific order that you should follow in, in setting up the table, so Okay, Yep So what I would do is I would start with making sure the blade is parallel to the miter gauge slot first. Then I make the fence parallel to the miter gauge slot that automatically makes the fence parallel to the blade. It's kind of a, A equals B, B equals C then C must equal A then. So you wanna have the blade parallel first to make all that come together. And then the last thing I would do is check the perpendicularity of the blade to the table.

That part, the perpendicular blade part isn't kind of a deal breaker. You know, if you did that first, it wouldn't really hurt you or help you, but just in the sequence of events in my head blade to the slot, slot to the fence and then perpendicular to the table. Okay, second question is also on the table saw mine is similar to yours, it has the nice fence system and it's got the the measuring gauges on the, on the rail. Okay And I was wondering if it is necessary to use separate blades for cross cutting and ripping. Okay, it's a great question.

There's a couple right answers to this. At least a couple of right answers to this one would be you can get a dedicated rip blade. Rip blades typically have 24 to 40 teeth on the rim dedicated cross cut blade which usually have 60 to 80 teeth on the rim. Your cross cut blade can also do sheet stock, so it's a dual purpose. What comes out of that is that when you're ripping wood cutting in the same direction as the grain you'd use that ripping blade when you're cross cutting or cutting manmade materials or sheet stock, you'd use the finer tooth blade.

You never wanna use that fine tooth blade on your ripping cuts cause the gullets the valleys between the teeth are big enough to carry the chips out of the cut and you'll very quickly overheat the blade. So the other answer that's a right answer is you can put a combination blade in. So in today's saw blade marketplace, a real common blade for that has a 40 tooth alternate top bevel blade and that will rip effectively and cross-cut effectively and handle veneer sheet stock pretty well. So if you want it to just have one blade in the saw all the time you could do that. Now I think kind of part of your question was there's a cursor a pointer on the fence that gives you a measurement.

So if I change blades, what's the net effect of that. And in the real world, I find if I do go from a rip blade to a cross cut blade, the curve the size of the groove it makes is so negligibly different from one to the other. I don't really have to recalibrate my cursor every time I change blades. And that could be different with your blades. You know, you'd have to kind of check it to make sure but in my case I find it's pretty consistent from blade to blade so it's not a big deal.

Do you rely on the, on the gauges, on the on the front rail a lot or do you ordinarily check? I calibrate the cursor one time and I when it says four inches, it's four inches. And then I never measure between the blade and the fence. Okay Unless there's a dado ahead in that changes everything but from blade to blade, I just use the pointer on that. All right, third question is about rotors.

My first project is a cabinet Putting wifi in your house is that it? Oh, not that kind of router, okay Yeah, I don't don't know anything I know less about those than I do Okay let's stick with what work in rotors, okay. And I'm cutting dados for shelves in larger sheets So I'm using the rotor, not the table saw. And I was wondering when you use the rotor in a straight edge, do you come at it from a specific direction or it doesn't matter. Oh, it matters a lot and isn't that coincidental, I have a piece of wood and a straight edge and a rotor right here on the bench?

It's just crazy how this stuff works. All right I knew that question was coming. So here's the deal here's my panel, here's my fence and I'm gonna go straight ahead and clamp that down. Okay, so now Greg's question is about cutting dados and with a say a three quarter inch bit in our rotor we could plow across the panel, my right to left or from my left to the right. And there is a distinctly correct direction to do this.

So it has to do with the rotation of the bit in the rotor. When you look at the top of a rotor all rotors are gonna spin that bit clockwise. So as a result, when we feed, we wanna feed from right to left when the fence is between you and the rotor. And what happens with that dynamic is that when the bid is cutting this way and it's entering the wood as you move from right to left, the bid is actually the cutting action is helping to hold the rotor against the fence. If we go from left to right, the bid is entering here and it's gonna have a tendency to pull the router away from the fence.

And it makes it very difficult to control and really very unsafe to control. So when the fence is here and the base of the router is here, going in this direction is gonna help keep the whole system against the fence. So everything comes out right and comes out safe. Makes sense? It does and it explains why my dado went Got a little sneaky on yah?

Okay. All right. That take area? That does. All right, thanks sir for coming in Thank you And I hope you enjoyed Q and A with George.