(upbeat music) - whenever you cut wood, you have to be concerned about tear-out. and tear-out is what happens when a blade makes the cut, and itsorta pulls the grain
wood branding iron amazon, with it and splintersright at that cut point. so to avoid that, we typically use zero-clearance insertsand sacrificial fences to help support the fibers.
but there's actually a better way, taking a cue from anold-school methodology. it's something i do whenever i'm gonna make a cross cut on wood. and i've got some tendons here that i'm cutting for a project i'm working on right now that are a great example. let me show ya. this is a very simple marking tool
called a cutting gauge. and you see we've gota moveable fence here and a blade that allowsus to scribe the grain. and by pre-cutting thatgrain across the grain, we actually sever thefibers ahead-of-time, so when the saw blade makes its cut, we have a nice, clean edge. now, this one's set for a pretty big tennen 4 1/8.
now, just run it along the edge and scribe a very fine line. and i'll do this on all four sides. now i've got my dado stack installed and i'm using a mitergauge to make the cut. the miter gauge has a metal fence so i certainly don't want to cut into it. and i could put a sacrificial fence there
but i'm being very lazy today. so i'm just gonna make this cut with this piece hanging into this open space. and my zero clearance isn't much of zero clearance. most of these stock dado inserts really aren't going to hugthe blade very tightly. so without any of that support
that we normally would want there i'm going to make these cuts with my blade right on my line. (soft music) woooaa baby. that is about as clean andcrisp as you could expect a cut to be. now i'm not saying you don't need zero clearance insertsand sacrificial fences.
you should still have them on your tools. but if you have a little trick like this up your sleeve you can absolutely be sure that all your results are going to be perfect cuts. right. and this is just one example of how using old school tools
and bringing them into a new school shop with power tools can be incredibly beneficial. and in fact it's just one of the things that i recommend in mybook hybrid wood working. so if you want a copy go to twwstore.com and check it out. alright thanks for watching everybody. (upbeat soft music)
