Pretty obvious tip

[Jerome Hanby]

I needed to cut some identical strips of plywood that I'll glue up into a beam for the cabinet lift I'm building. I wanted to get them pretty close to identical so I didn't have to spend a lot of time working them over with a flush trimming bit or running each one through the table saw. My first thought was to just run the sheet over the table saw, but it's a pain to wrestle a full sheet of plywood. The track saw would work, but from past experience, I knew that I'd never get the strips identical by making marks and connecting them with the rail. Then it occurred to me that I could just spin the rail around so that the "waste" side was towards the edge of the sheet and clamp a piece of scrap close to the width I needed lined up with the edge of the plywood and butt the rail edge against that piece and clamp it down. Then I remove the scrap, cut the strip, and repeat until I had the five strips I needed. This might not be as easy a solution if I had to have strips of some particular exact width, but in this case, and in most things I build, identical is more important than exact.

Pretty obvious in hindsight, but maybe someone else has the same blind spot I had and this will help.

[ian maybury]

Good move though Jerome.

I've run into that one trying to do stuff with a Festool rail saw pending getting my table saw set up - although usually on jobs where cutting to a dimension matters too. I cut some shims on the bandsaw of the thickness required to set the offset of the rail when cutting to a line - it takes two thicknesses because the offset is different depending on which side of the saw blade you are cutting to the line with. The plan is (another on the list) to do some that will locate accurately on the rail using the slot the saw guides off - it struck me that Festool could easily enough do a set in plastic.

When i want two pieces of exactly the same size in thinner material (e.g. ply) i've been known to resort to tacking them together with double sided tape, carefully checking the squareness of the blade and doing both in a single cut...

Building up a shop is an interesting exercise - there's been so many times where i've found myself needing the equipment i'm setting up to set it up - and had to bodge it a bit. So to speak.....

ian

[Sam Murdoch]

Good work around, especially if you are in the field with only a track saw, but when I'm faced with this issue (and, I like you, have a table saw and a track saw) I just calculate the number of rips in inches + a waste factor - run my track saw to that wider dimension and then take that more manageable piece to the table saw. If need be I do 2 or 3 rips off the plywood sheet to get the sizes easy to handle on the table saw.

[Jerome Hanby]

Good work around, especially if you are in the field with only a track saw, but when I'm faced with this issue (and, I like you, have a table saw and a track saw) I just calculate the number of rips in inches + a waste factor - run my track saw to that wider dimension and then take that more manageable piece to the table saw. If need be I do 2 or 3 rips off the plywood sheet to get the sizes easy to handle on the table saw.

If the strips had been shorter, that's exactly what I would have done. I wanted to see what the beam would look like full height, so I would have been running 4" or so wide 8' strips through the table saw. My current cabinet projects have eaten up a lot of my open space and clearing 8 feet in front and behind the saw was going to be a pain. I'll probably make the beam 6' tall, so that wouldn't have helped much anyway...

Funny how everything seems to result in a catch-22. I really need this cabinet lift before I finish this current cabinet so I can install it and get it out of my way, all of which would be much easier if I could get the cabinet out of my way so that I had room to build the lift <g>.

[Sam Murdoch]

Sorry - been there myself - should have know there was more to your dilemma :D

[Ryan Mooney]

Its a great trick really.

I actually have a handful of pre-marked blocks for different sized for doing this :D Everytime I need a new one I just add it to the stack. It also works pretty well for doing router dado's (so I have - for example - a 3/4" "rabbet/dado" offset block. For rabbets simply align to the edge of the piece, for a dado align to the far side of the dado).

[Alan Schaffter]

How wide will the strips be? You mentioned 4"? Does your circular saw have a guide fence? That is what I would use since I don't have a track saw.

Go ahead and use your track saw, but don't try to align it to measured marks. Make up two identical spacers on your tablesaw. If the beam doesn't have a precise height, don't fret over the width of the spacers. Temporarily clamp them flush to the end of the sheet and align the track against them, clamp the track, remove the spacers and go for it- no measuring involved, all strips will be the same width. After first cut, use the spacers to reset the track.