How to safely cut lots of small pieces on the table saw.

[Joe Hillmann]

I want to make several sets of dominoes and am trying to figure out a safe, quick way to cut them on the table saw. I am trying to cut the dominoes to length with a stop on my miter gauge. I am cutting 4 at a time. If I run the gauge all the way past the blade about 50% of the time the back side of the blade hits one of the cut off pieces and sends it flying or puts a nick in it.

What I ended up doing for the first set is stack up for strips, run them through the blade, stop when the pieces are clear of the teeth at the front of the blade but not yet to the teeth at the back of the blade, shut off the saw, wait for it to stop, pick the pieces up, then start all over again. It gives me nice smooth pieces safely but all that starting and stopping is SLOW.

Is there a safe way to speed up making these dominoes?

[John Schweikert]

The safest thing to do is build a table sled. I built one for my Bosch saw and find that I can cut all sorts of sized pieces. If you build a sled so both sides of the cut are clamped then there is zero risk of a small piece getting caught in the blade and thrown out.

http://www.schweikertphoto.com/image_downloads/table_sled.jpg

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe.....John's got the right idea!

A friend is Catholic and makes rosaries. He's got me cutting pieces that are 3/16" thick by 5/16".....Joined with half laps.....one piece is 1 1/16" long.....the other is 1 7/8" long....... All of it done with a sled which has hold downs and an adjustable stop block. My hands remain on a 5" high white oak fence over a foot away from the blade.

Last Friday I milled the material to 5/16 thick and ripped to 3/16" wide.

Saturday in a couple hours we took the pieces, milled the half lap joints and then cut the pieces to length. All of it is done using the adjustable stop block, thickness and length gauge blocks to set the right lengths so that it is incredibly accurate. In a couple hours we made enough for about 100 crosses. Once the gauges were made a couple months ago, we don't measure anything....just use the gauge blocks for setup.

[John Schweikert]

I use a Rockler clamp when I need repeatable sized cuts.

http://www.schweikertphoto.com/image_downloads/rockler_clamp.JPG

And for demonstration, here are small pieces held down.

http://www.schweikertphoto.com/image_downloads/small_pieces.JPG

Making the t slots for clamps closer or just more of them for options can open up possibilities. I'll probably add more t slots at some point.

[Stephen Cherry]

How about a sled with a stop block and a destaco clamp?

[David L Morse]

Nice Sled! This is a really good reason to build one right now. If that's not an option there are other approaches. I would attach an extension piece to the miter gauge and the stop block to that. Stack the strips against the extension and hold them there with a spring clamp. There's no need to go all the way through the blade since the parts are clamped. The cutoffs should fall to the side. Pull the miter gauge back far enough so the pieces drop into the small box taped to the fence rail when you release the clamp and repeat.

Note that I am not certifying the safety of this procedure but only offering it as something I would do.

This is a pic of a quick mockup - not anything useful as is!
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[Bruce Wrenn]

Two ideas. First a blast of air to remove cut offs, or a shop vacuum to pick them up. I've seen tips using both ideas. Air hose could be connected to top of backer board on miter gauge fence, angled away from the blade. A foot valve made from a blow off tool (ShopNotes #108) could control air blast. Maybe even a combination of the two.

[Joe Hillmann]

Two ideas. First a blast of air to remove cut offs, or a shop vacuum to pick them up. I've seen tips using both ideas. Air hose could be connected to top of backer board on miter gauge fence, angled away from the blade. A foot valve made from a blow off tool (ShopNotes #108) could control air blast. Maybe even a combination of the two.


I tried with the shopvac, it didn't have enough suction, I never thought of using air. If there is a next batch I will give that a try. Right now I am having a hard time getting the laser to do a perfect mark on more then 5 at a time. I was hopping I could put 4 sets in at one time, hit go, and twenty minutes later pull out four perfect sets of dominoes. I won't go much further with this until I get that problem solved.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe....here's an idea....have you ever watched Norm cut plugs to fill countersunk screw holes? He drills a bunch of plugs using a plug cutter and then cuts them free from the block of wood on the tablesaw. Recently

Try taking a piece of wood say 3/4" thick.....rip the "dominos" in both planes say 3/8" deep into the wood. Then lay painters over them to catch then and stand the wood on edge ....... rip them free with the bandsaw or table saw.....

A recent tip from Woodsmith magazine used this same method to cut plugs to plug

[Michael W. Clark]

I think with either the sled or miter gauge, you may have to hold down the cutoff pieces to get the quality you want and avoid the chance of one coming back. A destaco or carr-lane type clamp would probably work well to hold down the offcuts. Using the sled, I have used the eraser end of a pencil. It works well to hold the small peices down and to move them out of the way to slide the stock over for the next cut.

If you can make the miter gauge work and push all the way through the blade so you can dump the pieces at the end of the table, it may be faster. Maybe instead of stacking the pieces on top of each other, you stack them in front of each other? This way the blade is not as high and less prone to kick one of them, but you probably still need to secure the offcuts if cutting multiples.

[Joe Hillmann]

Ken, the problem with that for what I am doing is the finished surface is whatever is left by the table saw. The way I am doing it now the finished surface on all but the ends is what is left by the planer

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe....I will post a photo shortly of my small parts sled. I think if you rotated my clamps 90º, it would be pretty fast for you. The stuff I am cutting is much smaller so I have to use some different hold down arms in conjunction with the clamps. It will be more readily apparent when you see the sled.

Back in a couple minutes with some photos.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

So here's the deal.....I mill slabs of wood 5/16" thick and then rip them into 3/16" wide pieces. So each cross is made of 2 pieces of 3/16" by 5/16" wood. Each piece has a half-lap joint cut into it. The vertical piece is 1 7/8" long. The cross piece is 1 1/16" long. The pieces are so small that just the wind from the saw blade spinning was moving them even when lightly clamped on psa sandpaper. So I added these locking clamps to put much more pressure on the arms. Thus, this past Saturday, we made hundred crosses in a little over 2 hours and that included milling the half-lap joints and cutting them to length. I use a straightedge pushed up through the saw blade slot and gauges blocks to set the lengths and the width for the half-lap joints. Since we made the gauge blocks, nothing is measured. It's incredibly simple, accurate and fast.

In the case of dominoes....I would NOT use the arms as I do with these smaller items but would rotate the locking clamps 90º so the handles are pointing away from the fence with the stop block and use the stop block. Slide the finished material over until it touches the stop block, lock both clamps, cut, pull the sled back clear of the blade...unlock both clamps....remove the cut domino......slide material over to the stop block.....lock both clamps....and repeat the process.....



257592The two knobs lock the stop block. I used t-track on the adjustable stop block.

257593Here's looking down on the two arms that hold the material to the surface of the sled. If you look close you can see some of the material we actual use. The two locking clamps apply pressure to keep the small parts from moving while milling the half-lap joints and cutting to length.

257594Here you get a better picture of what is happening. There is a small piece of the material for the crosses be held in place in these photos. For cutting the dominoes, I would just rotate the clamps and just use them to hold the material while cutting.


257595 In this prhto....the clamps are released....the painter's tape in the upper left is holding some spare arm material to the sled. The painter's tape on the right is holding the gauge blocks for the crosses to the sled. It might be a couple months before I need to make any more crosses for my buddy and I don't want to loose the gauge blocks or the spare arms in case one breaks in the future.

To give you an idea of the material size we are cutting....this last photo....

257596The material in it's widest plane is barely wider than a common pencil...in it's narrowest plane it isn't as wide as a pencil.

[Shaddy Dedmore]

I use an accurately cut piece of scrap taped to the table against the fence close to the front, put the piece to be cut up against that instead of the fence. Then use the miter with a sacrificial backer. You can use a long scrap piece or a pencil to scoot the pieces out of the way. To get more room between the fence and the blade, use a wider piece of scrap against the fence.

Hard for me to articulate. Sorry. For the scrap piece, cut it to like, 5 inches. Then add 5 inches to the fence. As in, if you want it to cut 2 inches, set the fence to 7 inches, use carpet tape to secure the 5" piece against the fence close to the front of the table. No remeasuring, no worry of things getting pinched and thrown from the blade. easy to use a pencil or push block to scoot the cut offs around. If you want more room, just make the 5" piece 10" or whatever.

As for the lasering, did you cut a template first? Take a series of squares and cut out a 1/8" ply or MDF. Then you can line up the dominoes to your engraving. Let me know if you want more info on that.

Shaddy

[Rick Potter]

Never made dominos, but I made a LOT of Lincoln Logs. After dadoing the grooves and cutting the wide piece into long narrow strips of single filler blocks, I then had to cut them off individually. In all, I made over 20,000 cuts making them.

To cut off the small singles, I simply put a sacrificial addition on to my miter gage, with a stop block. I made a cut, went past the blade, then pulled the miter gage back, which left the 1 1/2" piece laying in front of the blade. The next cut moved it forward a bit, then the next and the next. Pretty soon there was a line of the little buggers out to the end of the table where they fell into a 30 gallon trash can, which, as I remember, I filled twice. Lost a few, not many. I stuck a couple runners on the table to guide them into the can.

A couple tips. If I were doing it again, I would use the narrowest kerf Skil Saw finish blade I could find.....less wind to move small pieces. I also used a splitter to keep the pieces from going toward the blade, this would be a good time for a special zero clearance blade insert with the blade raised very little, and a small splitter up close, that the miter gage could go right over.

Rick Potter

[Tai Fu]

If you have a bandsaw, use that. It is much safer to cut small pieces on a bandsaw than a tablesaw.

[johnny means]

Are you cutting these dominoes against the rip fence? If so, this is a definite no, no.

(could somebody cue up the forehead cut thread)

You need to be using a stopped fence.

Stacking is also a huge no, no. You could wrap your stacks in tape, but this would defeat your goal of time savings.

I would bet, that unless your cutting thousands of dominoes, that the most efficient way to do it would be individual cuts done in a safe manner. For example, if you cut 500 domines at 5 seconds per it would take less than 45 minutes. You'll spend at least that much timed trying to build or design some way of streamlining the process.

[Brian Tymchak]

In Malcolm Tibbets first DVD, he shows a sled for the TS he built for cutting segments for segmented turnings. Quite ingenious, really. He has a second level on the floor of his sled with one end cut on an angle that allows the cut off to fall down the ramp away from the blade. I can't post any picture of it. He might show it in his book, but I can't remember.

[Larry Fox]

I know you said in your original post that you wanted to use the table saw but have you considered maybe doing it with a hand saw? For small parts, even if you have a lot of them, it might be feasible to - very quickly - build a specialized miter box of sorts where you could cut-slide-cut-slide........ This and a good sharp saw should allow you to make quick work of them. They are small enough so that you could also likely build something where you could gang them up.

Without building a sled as others have suggested, I would be wary of this cut on a table saw.

[Tai Fu]

I said bandsaw... its much safer, no danger of flying wood from kickbacks. You can also safely stack pieces to make the work faster assuming your bandsaw is correctly set up.

[Myk Rian]

I clamp a piece of scrap to the fence to make an extended face.
Butt the piece to the board, make your cut with the miter gauge, and the off cut falls away from the blade. The fence isn't there to trap it.

[Joe Hillmann]

I was not using the fence. I was using a stop block clamped to the table that stopped about 8 inches before the blade. I ended up mounting an air nozzle to blow the parts away from the blade and was able to cut about a thousand dominoes in ten minutes or so. Now I need to figure out a way to tumble them to round the edges a bit. Has anyone ever tried using a clothes dryer to tumble wooden parts?

[Tai Fu]

Commercially they use a vibratory tumbler with various media for things like this.

[Joe Hillmann]

Commercially they use a vibratory tumbler with various media for things like this.

I don't have one of those though. It is hard to find much detailed information on tumbling wood to smooth or finish it.

[Tai Fu]

Well you can't just smooth wood by tumbling it by itself... you need some kind of a media or something. Slow way would be to sand it piece by piece but maybe you have to build a ball mill or something, then place the wood in the jar along with some kind of an abrasive powder. Do not use a dryer... the media/piece you need will weight quite a bit.

[Joe Hillmann]

I did not know that, I thought just the wood bumping into itself is what did the smoothing.

[Tai Fu]

it depends, but it just seems like it is more likely to burnish the wood pieces, but it might take a REALLY long time without abrasives. Obviously you want very fine abrasives... I think in industry they use a vibratory tumbler with ceramic stones, but thats for metal parts... perhaps for wood they use rubber media impregnated with abrasives.

[Pat Barry]

See Brian's post from this morning. He is describing a great way to do the job safely. You would have the cut parts end up out of the way of the blade and kickback concerns and you would have the zero clearance feature that is essential for this job rolled into one. Now you just need the indexing feature and that can be set from a block clamped to the rip fence that is only there for positioning the cut but not involved in the cut. You could knock out the jig in a morning easy and be in production in the afternoon.

[Erik Loza]

I said bandsaw... its much safer, no danger of flying wood from kickbacks. You can also safely stack pieces to make the work faster assuming your bandsaw is correctly set up.

This ^^^.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Pat Barry]

Here is my interpretation of the sled idea that Brian described. This could be modified for a bandsaw easily
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[glenn bradley]

There's always more than one way to skin the cat. I do this:

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You manually slied the arched piece to the left, slide your blank up to it and then manually slide the arched piece to the right out of the way. Cut and repeat.

[Pat Barry]

That is a cool idea for the stop. I think I will be copying that for future use.

[Joseph Tarantino]

ditto. that's a really good idea. hard for the offcut to get trapped.

[Michael W. Clark]

For tumbling, check out the tumblers used for cleaning spent shell casings. I don't think they are cheap, but may work for you and be of interest.

[Kevin Groenke]

We often have dozens of students cutting 1000's of small pieces for architectural model building. Often we will build what I call a "bulldozer". This is basically just an extension fence that clamps onto a miter gauge which has a stop block and hold-down block attached on the waste side of the blade. When cutting the small pieces, the blade is high enough to cut through the stick of stock, but not so high that it cuts through the extension. The "bulldozer" establishes the length of the off-cut and the hold-down block keeps everything under control: since the front is open, when you back up, the off-cut is deposited safely past the back-side of the blade. The extension, stop and hold down blocks come from scrap and just get brad nailed/pinned together.

When I worked in a place that made Biro style wooden toys, we "barrel tumbled" parts using walnut shells as media, I've also heard corn cobs are used for softer wood species. I don't know about a dryer, but I imagine it wouldn't be to hard to get a cement mixer to do the job.

http://thefinishedpart.kramerindustriesonline.com/2009/09/wood-tumbling.html

-kevin


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http://youtu.be/TysRbvk7-YM

-kg

[Gus Dundon]

It is difficult to cut and control small pieces while being pushed on the table saw blade. That is why I consider using
band saw machine.

[glenn bradley]

Kevin's little bulldozer combined with the riving knife looks like a quick, accurate, repeatable and safe method. I'm going to remember that setup for future use.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Kevin....Obviously that works well with something the size of a domino.How well does that work with parts much smaller than a domino?

The parts I have been cutting are 3/16"x5/16"x 1 1/16" or 3/16"x5/16"x1 7/8".....the wind caused by the blade was enough to rotate them out from under clips that were applying pressure to them. I installed PSA sandpaper and light pressure still wouldn't hold them. That is why I installed the two lockdown clamps on my sled to appy much greater pressure to the wooden clips to hold them in place.

[Kevin Groenke]

Hi Ken,

We've used "the bulldozer" to cut pieces as small is 1/8 x 1/8 x 1 but at that size there are better ways. When pieces get that small, the tolerances of the stop and hold down get increasingly important- some strategically applied sandpaper certainly wouldn't hurt. A zero clearance throatplate is critical and a good blade helps (we'll sometimes go to an 8" thin kerf for really small stock as they seem to move small parts around less). Usually when pieces get that small we just hand students a CHOPPER, miter-cut or a miniature chopsaw (http://www.harborfreight.com/bench-top-cut-off-saw-42307.html) (we have several mounted to boards with a back fence w/scale and stopblock) as they're quicker, portable and don't tie up a tablesaw for however long it takes. All of these cut most hardwoods up to 1/8" thick pretty well, the saw maybe up to 1/4".

Your lap joints are a separate challenge, I would probably try cutting the dados in 4 or 6" wide x 24"+ long sheet with a trim router and guide (or tablesaw w/box joint blade), then rip that into strips, then crosscut the strips to length.
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