Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Safety Measures of our Table Saw

Happy New Year to all the puzzle lovers and woodworking lovers!

I have written about our workplace facilities on this blog for four times last year, "The Sanding Workstation", "A Handmade Branding Iron", "Safety Measures for the Jointer" and "A Handmade Router Table." Well, can you guess what will be the next subject? Oh yes, you already saw the title of this blog, of course. I'm going to write about the most powerful, useful and dangerous power tool, a table saw.


We have three table saws and they are customized by Juno. There are lots of jigs for the table saws and one of them is a zero clearance insert. Here are the inserts we use. Juno made two wooden zero clearance inserts and one for mitre cut, one for straight (90 degrees) cut and a splitter. On top of the picture below, there are a wooden zero clearance insert for mitre cut.


The reason he made these jigs is to prevent off cuts of small pieces of timber to be jammed between the gap of the saw blade. With the inserts that were attached to the table saw, there is a wide gap around the saw blade. If you want to cut small pieces of timber and use the attached standard insert, cuts off of timber might be jammed into the gap, and it will cause damage, for example, off cuts might scatter and hit you, and they might also damage the pieces you are cutting or damage the saw blade.

As you see in the picture below, there is a very narrow slit for the saw blade which barely passes through. It has only a narrow gap for the saw blade and it can support timber and timber will be more stable.


This zero clearance insert is made of wood because it is easier than making it of metal. Juno inserted grub screws on each corner of the zero clearance insert because it can be adjusted to the height easily by screwing. (see picture below)


There are other parts here, these are riving knives. The attached riving knives are big and they have to be attached to the parts to which the saw blade is attached, and it is physically impossible to use these metal riving knives when we use a handmade zero clearance insert.


Therefore, Juno made and attached this wooden splitter to the handmade zero clearance insert. This splitter is almost the same thickness as the saw blades and is fixed by glue and reinforced by bamboo skewers. Dependent on purpose, Juno changes splitters or riving knives appropriately.


The next picture shows lots of screw holes on the surface of the table saw. Juno made these holes for setting fences and jigs easily.


There is one more convenient thing, it's an extension of the table saw, out feed table. When you rip long timber, it would be a little difficult to keep it stable. The out feed table makes the timber stable and makes feeding easier to push. It's a very convenient function but takes room, so that Juno made it as a folding-out feed table.


Juno customized the table saws a lot and made them more convenient. The puzzles we are selling now were mostly cut by this table saw.

Well, we are working on Juno's new puzzle now.
Please look forward to seeing the next puzzle!

Yukari