How to Use a Table Saw

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm James with JNC Home Repair and today I'm going to show you how to use a table saw. This particular model here is pretty basic. They are all basically the same. The first thing you want to consider before you operate your table saw is how high your blade is. Make sure that you haven't plugged in your saw yet. You want to do all this before you plug it in. Basically what we have got here is we have got a half inch plywood. What you do is you just put your board right up next to your blade and you see how much blade we have got sticking up over the board, you really don't want that. So all you do is you loosen your dill here and you can control if you want to cut 45 degree angles, any degree, anywhere from 0 to 90 degrees you can cut. You want to determine that first before you actually do some cutting. Once you determine if you want to get a square cut you just get your blade right there, lock your blade in place and there is a little knob right here that actually locks it in place, line your board up next to your blade and you turn your dial here that is just going to raise the blade or lower the blade. You see the blade going up there and you want to come back down this way and you want to crank it back down and you want to get it just a little bit above the thickness of the board that you are cutting, you only want a little bit of the blade sticking up through the board. Once you have determined that you take your square, it is always a good rule of thumb just to make sure that your blade is square and you take you a speed square and what you do is just lay it down flat on your table surface and put it up next to the blade. You can actually tell if there is any kind of gap in between the square and the blade, you are going to know that your blade is not perfectly square. So what you want to do is you want to adjust it accordingly if there is any kind of gap, this one is pretty square so you really don't need to adjust it too much and that is going to make sure that when you but your board you are going to get a nice straight clean cut. If your blade is not square then it is going to cut your board and there is going to be a little bit of an angle on your cut. If you are trying to get a perfectly square edge. So once you have got that determined and you have got your blade square, you've got the height set to the right height then you are just going to determine whether or not you are going to either rip your board or you are going to use a cross board and cut your board cross cut ways. Now if you are cross cutting it you are not going to need the fence. So what you are going to need to do is you are going to need to lift up your fence just like so and just remove it and get it out of the way. That is going to give you a nice flat surface to give you room to put your board on the table and actually use your slide to cut through the board. We have got this line marked up right here and what you will do is you will just line it up and you can move this slide to the other side if need be depending on how you want to cut. You may be right handed or left handed and it gives you just an option of being able to switch it back and forth. What this does is it actually keeps your board straight as you are running it through the blade. Now it also gives you the adjust here where you can actually turn this to a 45 degree angle. You can turn it back and forth and cut it at different angles too. So if it is at a 45 degree angle you can cut it just like so just like that. You can turn it back the other way and you can cut it this way. There are lots of different varieties on how you can use this saw and what you need to do to operate it efficiently. Now if you don't want to cross cut your board and you want to just rip this board in half now that is where you are going to need your fence. Put your fence back on your saw just like so, determine how much you want to rip off or how much board you have got left and you just act it accordingly. Now if you want to just rip this board completely in half you can measure it once you have got your mark put on your board, all you do is just lay your board up here and actually just push the fence over until you touch the board, lock it in place and that is going to give you a nice sturdy straight edge to actually lean the board up against as you run it through the saw. That is going to give you a nice clean cut instead of just trying to push it through the saw without the fence, it is going to be moving around. It is hard to just keep it steady unless you are just real good with a table saw, it is better just to use the fence. Now if you have got something where you are trying to rip a real real small board it is good to have one of these push sticks because you don't want to be sticking your fingers over there next to that blade when you are running the board through. When you are running the board through you can actually it has got a little lip right here and you can actually get on the edge of the board and push the board through the saw and you don't get your fingers anywhere near the blade. And that is the basic ways to use the table saw."