How to Begin a Crosscut with a Table Saw

Video Transcript

"Now, although ripping is primarily what you’ll do with your table saw, you can also perform cross cuts with a miter gage. This saw has one that's stowed on board. Remove our fence and set that right on the side here. Your table saw will have grooves on it. There’s after market miter gages that you can get that are pretty good quality. This one is the Bosch that came with this saw, and it’s pretty good itself. This fits right in this slot here. It’s marked from 90 to 30 degrees. 90 will give you a square cut. What we’re going to do is square the end of this here, taking off about an inch. Now, if you’d tried that against the fence, it would’ve tried to kick back and bound on you and that can be a dangerous situation. With the miter gage, you can adjust it to any angle from 90 up to 30. We’re going to do 45 degrees here. A very standard miter cut. We want to have as much of the board remaining as possible. One way to be sure is to take your board, line it up against the blade there, and draw a little line on your table. You’ll line up the point of your piece with that line, and you’ll get the maximum amount."