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54VIDEO Table Saw Accessories Full
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Jan 24, 2024
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View Video Transcript
0:00
In this video I want to talk to you about the top 10 table saw upgrade accessories
0:05
Now there's going to be more than this but this is my choice for top 10 and I guess the first one
0:12
is really pretty obvious and that is upgraded regular blades. Now by regular blades what I
0:20
mean is blades that are going to cut wood for you so nothing fancy like a dado blade or anything
0:26
like that. I'll get to those later. Just blades to cut wood, ripping, cross cutting, plywood
0:33
stuff like that. So what you see in the photo here are the three main types of blades you might
0:40
consider. The bottom one is a ripping blade so in this case ripping would apply to cutting solid
0:47
wood along its length and that operation generates a lot of ribbons of wood and coarse sawdust
0:55
and that's why this blade has a lot of room between each tooth and immediately in front of the tooth
1:02
there's a gullet it's called sort of a recess in the body of the blade so that sawdust has a place
1:08
to build up before it falls out of the cut as the blade exits the bottom of the board. So if you're
1:17
going to be using solid wood very much especially hardwood then a ripping blade is definitely a good
1:23
thing to consider. It just when it's sharp will go through very thick hardwood even two inch hardwood
1:30
no problem at all and the cut's surprisingly smooth too although certainly not smooth enough
1:36
for cross cutting or for working in sheet goods that might have some veneer on them
1:41
Now the middle blade in the photo here is a cross cutting blade and you can tell that because it has
1:47
a lot of teeth so a lot of teeth mean a finer cut but this sort of a blade wouldn't be appropriate
1:54
for ripping because as you can see there's not a lot of room between each teeth for that that sawdust
1:59
and top blade is what's called a combination blade and you can see why because it's kind of a
2:05
combination of the two underneath of it you have a group of closely spaced teeth in this case it's
2:11
five and then there's a big gullet space for sawdust to build up. So if you're going to be
2:19
buying just one accessory blade beyond the blade you get in the table saw which I've never seen
2:25
really good blades come with table saws they're decent or maybe even above decent but a combination
2:32
blade would be the one high quality blade that you'd want to buy and it's quite acceptable for
2:40
ripping quite acceptable for cross cutting unless of course you need a really smooth finish with
2:46
cross cutting. Cross cutting tends to chip the wood more than cutting along the grain ripping
2:54
so that's where the cross cutting blade would shine in this case but if you're going to buy one
3:00
just start with the combination blade. Now before I leave blades which is kind of the first and main
3:08
upgrade you'd want to consider I want to introduce you to a relatively new category of blades
3:15
Take a look at the photo on the left and you'll see that those blades are quite pointy on the top
3:21
the angle is fairly shallow it's almost like a bunch of little knives that have been brazed to
3:29
the body of the blade the carbide teeth and the configuration of those teeth can do
3:36
some remarkable things. The piece of Baltic birch plywood you see on the right I cut in my shop and
3:42
photographed using this blade so isn't that amazingly smooth it really is virtually a
3:50
flawless finish especially look at the edges of the outer faces that's where splintering would
3:56
most likely occur and there's really almost no splintering there at all so it looks great
4:02
but the interesting thing is this blade is also quite good at ripping so in a sense it's kind of
4:08
like a an extra effective combination blade and the claim to fame is that it's quite smooth
4:20
cross cutting and ripping. Now in my experience I do have to point out one drawback these blades
4:27
need to be very sharp in order to function properly and they don't hold their edge as well
4:36
as some of the other more traditional styles of blades so that's a little bit of a proviso but you
4:42
can have these blades resharpened carbide saw blades at least the big ones big ones larger
4:49
than what you use in say a handheld circular saw they're really an investment you can have them
4:55
sharpened three four five times maybe I don't recommend bothering trying to sharpen them on
5:02
your own there are hones you can get that can move a not too dull blade to kind of sharp blade
5:10
by hand at home in your own shop but dedicated saw sharpening shops can do a tremendous job
5:19
so these blades are expensive a good carbide blade is is costly you know 80 100 150 dollars
5:25
and more but they're going to last a long time as long as you get them resharpened they will
5:30
last a long time before resharpening that's what carbide cutting teeth are all about but don't
5:36
forget the resharpening there are probably local shops if you live in a city I don't live in a city
5:44
but I do ship my blades out to be resharpened and they mail them back and all the big shops are
5:50
geared up for this sort of thing so just something to consider now before I go on to the other
5:56
accessories I thought you might find this interesting back in 2012 I was invited to
6:03
go to Italy by the Irwin company Irwin was making saw blades at that time they had just bought
6:12
a saw blade plant in Udine Italy and these photos are ones that I took when I was on that tour
6:19
so the top left hand photo shows a blank of steel with the bodies of the blades laser cut
6:28
so they're sitting there ready to be removed they don't have their carbide teeth at the moment
6:34
those are added later in a second step but what you see in the top left is the way carbide blades
6:40
start now I was also really impressed with this plant because it was the cleanest plant I have
6:47
ever seen you could go to work there in the morning in a white tuxedo and you could leave
6:51
at the end of your shift and you wouldn't have any dirt on you believe it or not so that photo
6:55
in the middle that shows what the plant is like and it wasn't going to get dirty either it had
7:01
been designed from the ground up to be a really clean and nice place to work and bottom left you
7:07
see a guy loading a bunch of blade blanks into a heat treatment kiln that's the round door you
7:16
see to open because it looks like a great big clothes dryer in a way but to get blades to work
7:20
properly the consistency of the body metal needs to be just right and they achieve that through
7:26
very controlled tempering now the last stage of the process at this plant I visit is what you
7:33
see on the right and that's a saw blade having its teeth ground so the teeth have been welded
7:40
or brazed to the body and now through a computer controlled process those teeth are being precisely
7:47
shaped no handwork involved at all very automated and the product is excellent they really do make
7:56
some great blades there Erwin doesn't own the plant anymore but but they did then and it was
8:02
really my privilege to be invited out to see how everything everything works okay another thing
8:09
about blades there are regular thickness blades or full kerf blades and they're a certain width
8:18
and then there's a whole family of carbide blades that are called thin kerf blades and they're
8:22
roughly half the thickness so they chew up less wood for a given cut and that matters with bench
8:30
top saws because a bench top saw is not as powerful as a cabinet saw but if you put a thin
8:37
kerf blade on one it can cut through two inch hardwood quite easily as long as the blade is sharp
8:43
it's really remarkable the difference that it can make so you might be wondering well if thin
8:48
kerf blades are so good why would anyone want thick kerf it has to do with blade stability
8:54
a regular kerf blade thick kerf blade if you will is more stable and less likely to
9:01
set up vibrations during a cut which can make the cut less smooth so that's the only drawback
9:08
it's not a huge drawback either but if if you've got or you're going to get a bench top saw then
9:14
the thin kerf blade is definitely the way to go as those saws aren't really meant for absolute
9:19
precision anyway although you can use them to build any kind of furniture no matter how finely
9:24
you want to you want to do that dado blades this is a specialty blade not everyone's going to use
9:33
one but as i've explained in other parts of the course a dado is a three-sided groove cut in wood
9:39
and you can see one that i cut through some stained wood blue stained wood in the middle
9:46
and that's a a slot if you will for holding a shelf a horizontal shelf perhaps and dados are
9:55
just standard woodworking joinery the dado blade nowadays dado blades are all what they call stacked
10:04
dados so you have an inner and an outer blade those are the silver ones you see in the left
10:09
and then in between as you're assembling these wafers if you would on the arbor of your saw so
10:17
the shaft that spins and drives the blade you're going to put on more or fewer of the black shipper
10:23
blades which is what you see there too and if you want to really fine-tune the width of your dado
10:29
you can also incorporate some very thin spacers so you can get just about any width of of dado
10:35
you want and on the right you can see that's an assembled dado blade there ready to to cut a
10:41
groove that blade is shown quite high off the table just for visibility but in practice they
10:46
never stick up above the table very much because dados don't usually have to be very deep
10:52
and it's not something that everyone is is going to use because you can cut dados in other ways too
10:58
i mean the most common one would be with a router say but you should know about dado blades because
11:05
they're part of the the table saw blade scene now another accessory that you'd want to consider
11:13
pretty well right up front if you're working with anything other than the smallest pieces of solid
11:18
wood is some kind of an outfeed table or a side table now when i got involved in woodworking there
11:24
were no manufactured outfeed or side feed tables but now there are quite a few and you can see a
11:30
nice one there on the the left hand photo it's not solid but it does support anything you want
11:37
that extends beyond the saw table top the one on the left is not particularly large it's probably
11:45
the minimum size you'd want to use if you were cutting sheet goods for cabinet making say
11:51
but that doesn't mean you can't make your own really nice one and the the example on the right
11:56
is a shop built outfeed table combination cabinet this comes from a shop that's pretty
12:04
large lots of room and that's a beautiful outfeed table that's going to make it
12:08
quite a pleasure to work with all kinds of sheet goods a little thing very handy
12:16
generically called an angle cube i've shown how this works in other videos in the course but
12:22
it's essentially a magnetized digital angle meter you lay it you start by laying it on the table
12:29
of the saw you zero it so it brings the reading back to zero and then you stick it to the side
12:36
of the blade they're all magnetized so they hold themselves there and that will tell you the angle
12:42
of the blade relative to the tabletop and they're fast and actually a little more accurate than they
12:50
need to be uh this one and the one i own is accurate to one one hundredth of a degree which
12:57
is extremely fine and it can be if you're a stickler it can be kind of hard to get it exactly
13:03
where you want you know 90 degrees even or whatever but don't worry about a few one hundredths of a
13:08
degree off that's pretty inconsequential when it comes to woodworking but inexpensive little tool
13:15
and really quite handy now all saws come with a miter gauge and this is a tool that fits in the
13:25
the slot one of the slots in the top of the table and allows you to do safe and precise cross-cutting
13:33
now the miter gauge you see on the right is one that i have in my shop the metal part that you
13:41
see in the background is the actual miter gauge that came with the saw the wood you see in the
13:46
foreground is something that i've added and i'd always recommend adding a strip of wood to um
13:51
sort of what i call a standard miter gauge like this it gives it a much larger support surface
13:57
for your workpiece and it just improves the safety and accuracy of what you're doing
14:02
now i've also fastened some self-sticking high friction strips on there this is the kind of
14:09
stuff you might want to put on stair treads to improve traction you don't want your wood sliding
14:15
around on the miter gauge and those high friction strips really do help to lock it firmly in position
14:21
boosting accuracy a little more the gauge on the left is also one that i own and it's
14:28
completely manufactured it has a few more features than the run of the mill one
14:34
more accurate angle graduations this one actually has a a length stop and that's that weird silver
14:43
thing you see sticking up if i wanted to cut wood a bunch of pieces of wood to the same length
14:49
i would adjust that stop to where i wanted i'd flip it down and then i would butt the wood up
14:55
against it make my cut remove the workpiece put on some more wood repeat the cut that kind of thing
15:02
so they don't cost a whole lot these aftermarket gauges but so they're worth it they do make a
15:10
difference they they are going to improve your accuracy and your enjoyment over and above the
15:15
regular miter gauge cross cut sled so this is a device for accurately even more accurately than
15:27
with a miter gauge cross cutting wood and it also makes things very safe because the cross cut sled
15:35
fits into miter slots in the top of the table allowing it to slide back and forth precisely
15:42
but because you have so much real estate on these things you can work in length stops and
15:48
all kinds of other things that will allow you to really cross cut well and nowadays you know cross
15:55
cut sleds aren't as popular as they used to be because now we have chop saws sliding compound
16:02
chop saws regular swiveling ones and they are the king of cross cutting tools for most things up to
16:10
about 12 inches wide on the big ones so cross cut sleds aren't used as much as they used to but they
16:17
still are king when it comes to cross cutting really wide stock you know over a foot wide
16:23
the one on well both of these are what you see here are are shop made there aren't a lot of
16:30
aftermarket cross cut sleds out there now there may be a few but it's still common to build your
16:36
own the one on the left was built in a shop the image on the right is actually a sketch up drawing
16:45
sketch up is a drafting program and that drawing and the plans that go with it are available for
16:52
free online and with sketch up you can look at things from three dimensions by dragging them
16:57
around on your computer and it's really quite a useful tool and if you built one according to that
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drawing you'd have a really nice cross cut sled it's quite full featured this particular one
17:10
includes a tenoning jig that's that vertical thing with the toggle clamp on it and i'll be
17:16
talking a little bit more about that later okay on the topic of cross cutting we um we up the
17:24
ante a little bit and we we've got sliding side tables so this is a contractor saw with an accessory
17:33
sliding table so it it replaces the left hand tabletop wing that would normally be there
17:41
and it has sliding rails and a support piece that allows you to very nicely and smoothly cross cut
17:49
quite wide pieces of wood very accurately this one like a lot of manufactured ones
17:54
can adjust for angle too so you don't necessarily need to stick with 90 degrees
18:01
i wouldn't bother with something like this if you're just going to be cross cutting
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solid wood of regular width you'd probably be better off to get a sliding compound miter saw
18:12
for that but if you're doing wide stuff sheet goods and your saw isn't particularly large and
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you don't have room say for a side support table then then the sliding side table does
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does a great job and they're available for different different tools different brands as well
18:32
feather boards these are not very complicated as you can see and their purpose is to
18:42
hold the wood in this case against the fence you can also get feather boards that push down
18:48
to hold the wood down on the table i use feather boards most often in my router table
18:54
when i'm making trim because you want everything to be absolutely repeatable then and you just
19:00
feed wood in the trim elements are small anyway so you don't want to get near the
19:04
the spinning router bit so when it's all set up properly you just you're just feeding strips of
19:09
wood in and trim comes out the end it's actually quite a money-saving thing because trim is quite
19:15
expensive and you can make your own quite easily as i said on the router table but sometimes you
19:20
might want to use a feather board on the table saw too the good ones fit within the miter slot
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and lock there and once upon a time there were no ready-made feather boards not that long ago
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20 years ago or so i don't think you could find any so we would make them out of wood we'd cut a
19:37
piece of wood one by four angle the end at 45 degrees and then just make multiple cuts
19:43
to make the fingers and that works fine except it's a little challenging to clamp them to your
19:49
tabletop sometimes so ready-made feather boards make a lot of sense they're never expensive
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and they allow much easier adjustment so in this case you'd loosen the red knobs and that allows
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you to slide the feather board in towards the workpiece more or less depending on what you want
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you want a little bit of spring pressure against the wood but not so much that it's hard to push
20:13
the wood through so definitely something to consider now a tenoning jig i mentioned that
20:21
before this is a device that holds pieces of wood vertically as it travels across the blade
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and it fits in the miter slot two miter slots are pretty important in in table saws and you can make
20:36
a very nice tenon with something like this now i wouldn't consider this to be a must-have accessory
20:44
for two reasons first of all a lot of woodworkers never make tenons they use other simpler kinds of
20:49
joinery but also there are other ways to make tenons you can do it with a dado blade with your
20:55
wood flat on the tabletop and resting on a miter gauge and so you're you're chewing the wood away
21:02
with the dado blade first on one side then the other and then the the two edges and that will
21:08
make your tenon there there are other options as well so i would not necessarily recommend a
21:16
tenoning jig for everyone if you're going to be doing a whole lot of tenons and you don't want
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to take the time to set up your dado blade because that's one of the drawbacks of dado blades is that
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they're kind of time consuming to set up and then if you want to make a regular cut you got
21:31
to take them all off again so a tenoning jig speeds things up a little bit if you're going
21:36
to be doing much tenoning work now this uh this here is my own little wedge jig i learned about
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this when i was working in a cabinet shop if you remember my intro video i talked about whipple
21:50
tree kitchens like the shop where we made solid wood kitchen cabinets well you always need wedges
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for cabinet installation and one of the guys was making a batch of wedges for an installation job
22:02
we were going to go out on and i saw this in action and i'm really quite impressed the jig
22:08
itself is the darker wood that you see and it runs against the fence and it has a an angled
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notch in it and the angled notch accepts the wood from which you're cutting your wedges and that's
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the piece of construction grade spruce you see on the left so the jig holds the wood at an angle
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relative to the blade and then you just push the whole unit together through the blade and pass the
22:34
blade and your wedge just falls off on the other side of the table now for your next cut you'd flip
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the workpiece over and repeat the flipping is important because otherwise your your your stock
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is going to get more and more angle shaped so by flipping you kind of compensate you know one angle
22:52
one way one angle the other but it's a great tool and i use it all the time you can make different
22:58
ones too if you want longer wedges shorter wedges steeper wedges narrower ones and it doesn't cost
23:06
anything either and you can make some very valuable wedges just from scrap wood that would normally
23:11
not be useful for anything so that's kind of the the whole spiel on table saw upgrade accessories
23:20
there are others in the world too but i think these are the ones you want to look at and pay attention most often to
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