I left off last week having planed the cutting board after the first glue-up. I wanted to cut the board further, and that’s where I ran into a cutting issue with the tools I had. The riving knife on the table saw did not allow for cuts that do not go all the way through the material because the plastic blade guard is required to be on. And there’s no chance I’m going to cut anything without a riving knife–even if it’s a lower horsepower table saw with a small blade. I’m going to going to risk kickback.

See, the riving knife is a piece that sits behind the blade of a table saw. The table saw blade spins in the direction toward the operator of the table saw, so if a piece gets caught in the teeth, the blade acts like a batting cage pitching arm to hurl a caught piece of wood at the operator.

I tried to get a riving knife that sat lower with my table saw that would allow me to make slots in boards rather than cut all the way through. That way I could cut on one side and then again on the other so I could get a deeper cut all the way through. I had no luck in that area. Is it worth modifying a riving knife to do that?

But then something happened.

The DeWalt jobsite table saw went on sale on Amazon and Calah and I were about to use our 20% off all sold by, shipped by Amazon items because enough had been purchased from our wedding registry.

The DeWalt table saw has enough cutting depth to go through thicker pieces of wood. But it has a much thicker blade than the Proxxon table saw does. I’m now lucky enough to have both and use them in tandem, which I think is pretty cool.

I have mentioned in the past about how crosscut sleds are important with table saws. Miter gauges can work, but the cuts are harder to keep straight.

I was able to trim off the edges, but they were not as uniform as I would have liked. But the table saw worked!

So then it was on to making a sled.

I took a 1/2″ plywood board that was left over from the cushions project, some plywood pieces I glued up, and then some additional plywood pieces I cut into strips on the Proxxon table saw.

I also needed an outfeed table because I couldn’t have things fall off the end.

I had the vacmaster connected to the lower part of the table saw (you can see the hose in the bottom left corner of the picture) and the outfeed table made up of a plywood board I have used as a tabletop for my sukkah that I had finished with polyurethane so the termites don’t get it.

I put all the pieces of the sled together and put a block in place for repeated cuts of the same size.

I was about ready to cut it up for the next stage of gluing. More next week.

I left off last week ready to glue the pieces of cherry together.

For the strong, very water-resistant hold, I used Titebond III wood glue and tightened the parallel clamps.

I complemented these clamps with bar clamps and let the whole thing dry.

I had read differing opinions on how long to let things dry. Some said that the project could be popped out of clamps after half an hour. Others said an hour. Others yet still said 24 hours. I wasn’t going to take any chances with this one and let it sit for a full day.

Then came one of my favorite parts: Planing.

A lot of people have planers they can feed something through to take predetermined amounts of wood off a project to make an even surface.

I have hand planes.

I rely most on my Stanley No. 5 plane because the sole (flat part underneath) is very long, so the plane spans much of a project for an even surface.

I used the chamfer method to prevent tearouts. I’ll go into that another time, but it was very effective.

I planed the other side to make a flat surface I could then cut up for the next step.

Now, I’ll take a quick diversion to write about a cool thing I will be using later in this project.

During my sanding of projects in the past, I’ve had a small dust collection bag for the Makita sander, a small dust collection bag for the DeWalt sanders, and then finally a big vacuum that I had connected to the DeWalt sander, but the connection was through a rubber piece that had come with my table saw. It was not designed for the DeWalt sander and made a seal that worked but was prone to disconnection.

I saw that someone had posted on a 3D print site that a connector specifically for the DeWalt sanders because DeWalt itself does not offer a connector that allows for vacuums to be used with the sanders. That meant I was able to send the instructors to my cousin Yaakov for a 3D printed connector because he has a 3D printer. This would make it so that the sander wouldn’t disconnect from the hose while I was sanding something. He printed it, and I connected it to my sander, and I was in business!

More next week!