hey everyone welcome to think woodworks
my name is izzy swan and i'm just doing
a really uh
quick quick quick quick tip quick
tip i'm doing a really quick quick tip
man william flint who's been uh
a subscriber for a very long time here
with thinkwoodworks or
for a good good length of time um just
asked a question on one of my videos
about cutting straight edges with a
cordless saw skill saw i think he means
a cordless one
he says portable i'm not sure if it's
just a regular corded one or whether
it's a cordless one
i'm guessing cordless um
but he's having trouble he wants to cut
out some shelves and you want he wants
to he's having a little trouble getting
a nice straight edge he's using one of
those uh
craig guides i think he's talking about
the ones that actually attach to the saw
if that's the kind you're talking about
mad william
take it off the saw put it in the box
that you're going to sell at the next
garage sale
they don't work very well they're
they're okay for doing uh rough
rough cuts for construction like if
you're putting roofing on or something
i've got this this is an old door i want
to cut a section out of i'm just going
to go ahead and clamp this down to my
my table with some these are those
homemade toggle clamps i designed and
built a while back
i can't really say i designed these
because they're similar to the other
clamps
but they work great now
if you're using a cordless saw like this
one here this is a cheap ryobi belongs
to my father-in-law
something that is it's a good thing to
know and always remember
on a lot of brands of saws from the
outside of the bed here to the inside of
the saw blade
let me see or to the i'm sorry to the
outside of the saw blade from here to
here
is an inch and a half so that's handy
thing to know
so if you're measuring it out and you
want to cut something you're always
going to
i was going to put this side of the
fence the
right side of the fence up against your
straight edge
and i'll tell you why here in a second
is an inch and a half
so that's easy to know if you're using
an inexpensive saw like this you want
there's a couple things you want to
check you want to check
from the bed itself to the blade front
and back to make sure that's lined up in
an inch and a half those two
those two planes are parallel to each
other a lot of times
these things get chucked up under
benches or kicked around and that that
gets out of whack
with these lesser expensive saws another
thing you want to check for
is to see if your bed itself is warped
or twisted and
again that happens a lot and if it has
you're going to either want to try and
straighten it out or
unfortunately if you can't get it right
go get a new saw because it's never
going to track right down a
well don't get a new sod
it's just not going to track right along
a straight edge you can still use it for
other things
so once i've got that set up i know that
i've got an inch and a half between the
outside and the side of the bed
i know that if i want a 14 inch piece i
have to subtract an inch and a half from
that
and mark it and that's where my straight
edge will go so what i'm going to do
is i'm going to cut a 14 and a half inch
piece and i'm going to mark it
an inch and a half back so it's i marked
it 13 inches
on both sides 13 inches
and then grab a straight edge lots of
different things works for straight
edges as long as it's straight you know
a piece of plywood
mdf uh in my case i use
a four foot level a lot because it
reaches all the way across the four foot
piece of sheep sheet stock of plywood or
whatever you happen to be using at the
moment
throw a couple clamps on both sides
i know a lot of you guys know this
you're probably sitting there yawning
but
you know for a lot of new people they
don't know this and there are some
tricks to doing this
you know you can't just throw this up
here and make it work
if you try to put the straight edge on
the other side of the blade
a lot of times what's going to happen is
your your saw is going to want to wander
off and this is why
when you have it up against the right
side of the blade and you're pushing on
this
it tends to put pressure up against
because you're pushing on the outside
it tends to put pressure up against the
straight edge so
you're naturally pushing along this
you're keeping the pressure on that
straight edge and it's going to want to
track nice
if you go the other direction you're
actually pushing away from the straight
edge
and the tape the saw itself is going to
want to kind of canter out
so always cut on the right side of the
blade
and unless you're using a left-handed
saw left-handed in which case
the left-hand side
i suppose it would be helpful if i use
the right marks
this is like my mistake week
okay let's try this again
there you go nice straight edge ripped
with a relatively inexpensive
skill saw
and this trick works with anything you
can do this i mean
you could quite literally do this in
lieu of a table saw
granted that's a lot of work just to
make one cut but it's possible
so another thing i forgot to mention is
to make sure that your blade is nice and
square to the bed not just
whether it's parallel with the bed
itself but anyway thanks for watching
there's just a quick tip from think
woodworks
lots more fun stuff coming down the pipe
so don't forget to like and subscribe
and uh i'm working on the 50 wood shop
right now i'll have that up later today
or tomorrow
talk to y'all soon