Working With Wood

Video Transcript

"Today we're going to be touching on several aspects of woodworking. First we're going to talk a little bit about safety. One of the most important things about when working in a wood shop is safety glasses. Most every tool in here is constantly putting out flakes and pieces, and shards of wood and can get in your eyes, and just be an irritation or it could possibly blind you. Another thing is ear protection. A lot of the machines in here produce very high decibel sounds that over time can damage your eardrums. Another thing is to make sure there's nothing dangling off you. No bracelets, rings, necklaces, long hair, clothing that could get caught up in a moving piece. And lastly is open toed shoes. You want to make sure that you have shoes that cover your feet and no flip-flops or open toed sandals of any sort. One part of woodworking is milling your wood. When you buy wood in many cases it's rough sawn and un-milled. The first step of this milling process is joining your wood. What you do first is join either the edge or one of the sides. The purpose of joining is to create a flat plain on the board. Repeat the process that you just saw me do as many times as it takes to create to make this flat plain. After doing this turn the board on edge and do the same thing to the edge. The next part of this process is putting your board threw a plainer. The purpose behind this is to take your joined face and then parallel it threw a plainer. The first part of this process is getting the plainer adjusted to the height of the board. Once the board is snug under the roller, pull it back out the plainer and lock the adjustment. In order to properly plain your board first pass the board threw one time after you got the initial adjustment. After that turn the adjustment knob raising the table one quarter of a turn each time until the board is plained to the desired thickness. This is what a properly joined and plained board should look like. Smooth on both sides with a square edge. The next part of this is to cut our board to the width. We'll be using a table saw. This is called a rip cut, using a rip fence. Depending on the distance from the fence to the blade is how much our, how wide our board will be. You want to cut to were the board that you want to keep is between the blade and the rip fence, and the excess piece is cut off the outside of the blade. For the purpose of this demonstration we'll cut our board to 8 inches wide. First what you want to do is mark the leading edge of your board at 8 inches. Next you want to just using a tape measure against the fence and then the blade, adjust the blade to 8 inches. The next step is making sure your blade height is just above the surface of your board. That's the safest way to do it to where there's not too much extra blade sticking up above the board that could cause an injury. When ripping a piece of wood that's too narrow to have room to put your fingers between the fence and the blade, you need to use a push stick. The purpose of this is to hold down the board at the same time making sure that you're able to follow through the entire way to the cut making as safe as possible."