Making board square

[Anuj Prateek]

Whao! That's some heavy work. Have never worked with that large piece of wood. Everything I buy gets cut to 4-6' so that I can fit it in my car.

Funnily, ~2 years back for this-that type of work, I used to buy finished boards from HD. Yep, I bought few lengths of Walnut for like $15-20. Somedays, I still want to buy them but finding one board that would be straight and square is a pain.

[Jim Koepke]

Whao! That's some heavy work. Have never worked with that large piece of wood. Everything I buy gets cut to 4-6' so that I can fit it in my car.

That is one thing my car is good for. It can carry 8' boards without a problem. When buying longer pieces, my pick-up truck gets the job.

There was an error in my previous post which has been corrected. A couple more images have been added.

jtk

[Joel David Katz]

Table saw, crosscut sled

Bingo. Give than man a cigar.

[Jim Koepke]

Noted. Will buy and try some on next trip to lumber store.

Have you shopped at Crosscut Hardwoods?

http://www.crosscutseattle.com

There is a good reason they call it, "The Woodworker's Candy Store."

My visits to their Portland store has found some wonderful pieces of wood.

jtk

[James Brislawn]

Let me start by saying the table saw/ crosscut sled method will definitely work, and work well... but the man already has a miter saw which will work even better once setup properly. (Blade is designed for crosscut, no need to build a new jig, safer, quicker).

[Normand Leblanc]

In 1976 I was planing end grain with with a block plane. My fingers were cramping and tiring and I thought "people did not put up with this in 1790". I never used a block plane for anything again.

Cut to length before cutting to width. In other words, don't cut to width before cutting to length. Clear enough?

Lay out your length on the board with knife and square so that each end is knifed all the way around. Saw as close to the line as you can. Put the board vertically in the vise, chamfer the far corner (where you have extra width), and plane with a bench plane. Don't use a block plane. Plane to the line. You can check with a square, but the main thing is that your length and squareness are set up by your layout.

This 100%. I have the same exact technique and it's working great for me.

[Brian Holcombe]

Have you ever checked your square? I finally put standards in the shop and it has been very helpful in chasing out annoying bugs. I use an angle block that has been hand scraped on every face, it is accurate to a few tenths (.0000) so very reliable.

I prefer Warren’s approach by hand.

A SCMS will never produce a consistently reliable square cut, but a standard MS can be adjusted square, once adjusted check your cuts every time.

[Anuj Prateek]

Yup. Have a few machinist squares which agree with each other. I use then as reference. Have a Starrett combination square, when checked against the machinist squares, I can barely see any light.

[Anuj Prateek]

Update:

1)

Spent yesterday afternoon tuning my miter saw. It's not where I would like it to be but it's better than before. Right now it cuts a little extra at the entry and exit.

Don't know how to explain it but will try. We will call edge that butts against fence as reference edge. And the face where blade enters as top.

After cut if you put square on reference edge, near top then there is a little extra cut near reference edge. It cut a little less than 90.

If you put the square near bottom then there is extra cut away from edge. It cuts a little more than 90.

Huh, basically on entry cut starts a little less than 90 and on exit it's a little more than 90.

Overall I am getting cuts better than 1/64" on 6" wideboard.

I have to still tune the vertical angle. Ran out of jointed board yesterday.

2)

Tried hand cutting. I need lot of practice. Will keep practicing.

3)

Have not decided if I should try shooting board first or table saw sledge. At surface plans for both seem simple. In case of crosscut sledge I have doubts if it will work nicely on my Jobsite saw. Shooting board looks more simple so will probably try it first.

[Phil Mueller]

Anuj, I have a Delta contractor saw as well. Way back I did build a crosscut sled for it and it worked reasonably well. Keep in mind if you decide to try that, the table saw surface area is small. The crosscut sled needs to be small as well, otherwise you need to have in-feed and out-feed tables. While it works, I just haven’t used it in quite some time. In fact, I don’t even use the saw for crosscuts anymore. All my crosscuts are done with a handsaw and then squared up with either the method Warren shared, or a shooting board.

[Brian Holcombe]

This may seem crazy but this is the only method I use anymore to check square. I've given up on relying upon squares for checking my results. This is a surface plate (not a piece of granite counter top) and the angle blocks are hand scraped by a professional scraper.



Anywho, if the saw is a sliding compound miter saw it probably will never be able to produce a 90 degree cut, except by accident. I've used nice ones and they let you down like any other. The machines have linear rails and the support for the rails will deflect during the cut. The Kapex I had always produce a cut with a slight crown to it, so even on the chance that it did produce a nearly 90 degree cut, it would always have a very minor crown to it, preventing it from meeting up neatly to its adjoining board.

Not to mention other issues, like the fence faces not being parallel to one another or being on the same plane.

I replaced the SCMS with a standard chop saw (without the ability to compound or slide) and that saw, built like a tank, chops square. Even still I check about every 10th cut to make sure it's accurate.


In lieu of this, use Warren's method with a plane, you can build and tune a vise that will hold the part at 90 degrees in both directions.

[Anuj Prateek]

Yup. That's the Lumber Store I was referring.
It's a little far (in Seattle traffic) so sometimes when I need just a board I buy from Rockler.

[Anuj Prateek]

Truck is on my wishlist We have some plans to move to Canada, which is delaying the purchase.

[Anuj Prateek]

Well that got to be square I checked on eBay and these are some costly squares.


I have 12" Dewalt DW718 - so not sliding. I was getting pretty bad cuts. After tuning its doing better than 1/64". Have to still tune up the vertical angle (on coming Saturday). Will love to get it as close to accurate as possible. If nothing post-cleanup work gets reduced.