Turner's Corner
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Started squaring up my MDF block today on the table saw. The oversized piece in the middle worked well to give me a straight edge and the first cuts went fine, but I didn't quite cut off enough and had to do a second skim cut. Suddenly things went from easy to very wonky, with the piece wanting to bind on me mid-cut - no fun! Long story short, since the block was taller than my blade, I was having to flip it and make two cuts. I figured out my riving knife was just a bit taller than my blade, so on the first cut it was running into the uncut upper portion. Cutting in the middle of the block was no issue, the knife just bumped the back of the block up a hair and apparently I didn't even notice, but when I tried a skim cut the knife would fight its way to the outside of the top uncut part of the MDF block and torque it in towards the fence, which was causing the binding. Some history about this riving knife: my table saw did not come with one and so I made mine from one made for a latter model of my saw. You'll notice from the above photo I only drilled holes for the two bolts and not full slots. So every time I switched to a dado stack, I was having to completely unbolt the knife to take it out, which was getting very old. The discovery that the knife was also a little high was more than enough motivation to spend some time working on the knife. I had gotten a carbide hacksaw blade for this day, because whatever this knife is made out of, it laughs at standard hacksaw blades as it polishes off their teeth. A little cutting and filing later, I had too slots a little deeper than the holes. I wish there was a little more metal left, but I convinced myself that this stuff is plenty hard enough to be fine. With the riving knife now slotted and even with my blade, I finished squaring up my MDF. Then I thought about it for a while and decided to put finish on the MDF before routing the dovetail slots. My thinking is it will be very hard to keep finish out of the slots and it will be a pain to clean them up. We'll see if this cure is better or worse than the disease. (Not cut to length yet, hence the uneven ends. I'll do that after routing slots to deal with any tear out.) p.s. I was reminded that one cannot have enough air filtration when working with MDF. -
Hopefully by that time they can take the 1.5 foot drop to the ground without bothering me. -
Building myself a Jay Bates' MoXen block with an eye towards using it for a mortising jig among other things. Since I don't have any thick pieces of hardwood around, I'm laminating a five pieces of MDF. I used the Festool angle jig thing for the first time and I'm happy with it. Glue up. I cut the piece in the center oversized so I can use it as a straight edge to trim the opposite side. This is the first time I've used parallel clamps and I can understand the attraction people have to them - nice big clamping surface and plenty of torque.
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