Today was a bit of an experiment: Will my son sleep through me using my table saw in the garage? And the answer is: no. Not great news on the woodworking front, but not really surprising.
Anyhow, I got about an hour to work in the shop today, and I set up my workmate as a semi-permanent mitre saw stand. My saw is just a cheapo Ryobi 10” SCMS but I swapped out my store brand 80 tooth blade for a CMT speciality SCMS 60 tooth blade today and man am I impressed. I was only cutting some of the 1×4 red oak to length but the finish was impressive and tearout was minimal. A big improvement!
After that was done, I cut the 5’ cleats on the table saw. I discovered something rather annoying about my saw today, however. My saw (Ridgid TS2410LS) will not tilt all the way to 45 degrees. It gets to about 43.5 degrees and physically will not go any further. Maybe not a huge deal with this project, but I did plan on cutting at 45 degrees so that cutoffs from any side of any cleat would fit on any other cleat. Now I run the risk of two that don’t sit nicely if they are on the ‘fat side’ of the cut. Really annoying, and one more reason to replace the jobsite saw when funds allow.
I also have to say that cutting 5’ long cleats was a bit nerve racking. The splitter/guard on the Ridgid saw really doesn’t work right when the blade is tilted right over, and there is no riving knife on this saw. I was going to use my Grrriper but on a 5’ long board at some point you have to take the Grrriper off the workpiece to reposition it and I was worried about it kicking back. So, I added a featherboard right in front of the blade to hold the workpiece when I had to reposition the Grrriper. It worked well enough and fortunately I didn’t run in to a piece of tension wood. The next saw will have a riving knife that can tilt with the blade, no doubt about it.
Anyhow, tomorrow I will theoretically get the plywood up on the wall and I can mount the cleats. Then I will take some pictures.
Theoretically :)