I put my inside shop work on hold for a few days to take an advantage of the nice Chicago November weather in the outside shop. Last week, I glued up the top to a router table (see below entitled "Peer Pressure"). The glue up went well. Last night I tried squaring the top.
The router table top dimensions are 23" X 35". Unfortunately, my table saw fence only accommodates cuts to 32". Squaring the long sides was a piece of cake--or sliver of 6/4 plywood, whatever your fancy. The short sides presented a problem because the table saw fence is too short and my cross cut sled is too narrow. Sigh--see my earlier post concerning standards in woodworking. I do not own a sled saw a la DeWalt or Festool, but I do have the next best thing. On to the Craftsman circular saw and aluminum straightedge. I suppose real woodworkers have massive sliding table cabinet saws and could knock out an odd 23x35 panel in a heartbeat. Using a Starret 12" sliding square, straight edge, and clamps, I squared one short edge as well as possible to the two long edges. Once everything was in place, I did one 'practice' cut miming the motions and then pulled the trigger for real. It worked. Do you like how I could drag out the drama of a single circular saw cut through less than two feet of plywood? Anyway, only one short edge need be squared for the pending dado cuts; the other edge only needs to be squarish.
I lost a lot of time that was budgeted for cutting dadoes and laying T-track to solving a problem . The lesson here is better planning. If I had the presence of mind to think ahead, I would have either modified my table top dimensions, or built a bigger crosscut sled. A new project is now on my list: large crosscut sled. Once again, I'm `n idiot.
A note to nobody or nothing in particular: where has my hack saw gone?
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