On 22 Jun 2006 11:31:13 -0700, "damian penney"
wrote:


Chris Friesen wrote:
damian penney wrote:

As a newbie I went down this path and I heartily recommend not cutting
sheetgoods on the table saw. Clamp a straightedge to the goods and use
a good circular saw instead.

I do this, and get decent results. However, unless you have a decent
circular saw and blade, the results aren't as good as the table saw.

I recently upgraded to a cabinet saw, and cutting plywood gives me much
smoother edges than the circular saw.

Maybe it just means I need a new circular saw and blade...

Chris

I just upgraded from a $30 Skill saw to an Hitachi C7BD2 as the Skill
would flex left to right leaving saw marks in my cuts (and burning on
occassion) and it's made a big difference, with a nice sharp plywood
blade I can get glassy cuts with no tearout. I think if I had a better
infeed/outfeed setup and a splitter I'd be more comfortable with doing
the cuts on the tablesaw. My two incidents both happened before I
fashioned a splitter for the saw but the straight edge works well
enough for me not to look for an alternative at the moment.

You can put a hardboard foot on the circular saw as well, and then
plunge the blade through it to make a zero-clearance insert for it.
Reduces splintering immensely. If you just plunge it, you lose your
blade guard, with is a bad idea, but you can cut a wider groove on the
back side to let the guard through- as long as the hardboard is close
to the blade in the front, it'll do the job. And as an added bonus,
the hardboard foot is a lot nicer to your stock than the average
circular saw foot.

That being said, it seems a little odd to use a circular saw for
something like ripping a bunch of 2" strips when the table saw is
right there.