Bruce Kieffer

Tearout-Free Crosscuts on Plywood

Bruce Kieffer
Duration:   2  mins

Description

One of the hazards of crosscutting plywood on the table saw is the unsightly tearout you get where the blade exits the material. Bruce Kieffer demonstrates a great woodworking technique that will give you smooth, tearout-free crosscuts. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.

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4 Responses to “Tearout-Free Crosscuts on Plywood”

  1. Mario

    It is not always possible but with the example presented, what about raising the blade at 70% of the wood thickness and flip the piece of wood on the second pass? That way you don't have to move your setup at all. This is what I was expecting while watching the video.

  2. Bob Trento

    Good tip need to try it have struggled with that issue MANY times have tried scoring with a utility knife and tapping the cut line with different types of tape which worked OK???????? Looking forward to trying this one.

  3. Steve Gronsky

    Sounds like a good suggestion. However, you didn't mention what blade was in your saw during the shooting of the video.

  4. Juri Koolmar

    I will have to try it. Now, if it is important, I usually make the cut about a 1/32" wider, and then do a skim cut to final dimension, woks quite well. One setup is better than two.

I'm gonna show you a technique that I use to crosscut plywood tearout-free. Using my standard table saw. Now the first thing that I've done, is I've raised the blade about a sixteenth of an inch. Now that is just enough to cut through the veneer of the plywood. Now what I'm gonna do. I've got my fence set to where I want my final width of this piece to be. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna cut this first cut using that setup. Now I'll inspect my cut. And I can see it's perfectly tearout-free. Without changing the fence setting, I will raise the blade up enough to cut through this piece of wood. And then I'm gonna install my guard. So now that I've made the cut, I'm gonna inspect my cut. And I can see that I have a perfect, tear-free cut on both sides. Now the reason that this works is, that if I hadn't cut that scoring cut, the saw blade wants to push all the ways to the cut through. And that causes the fibers on the underside of the board to be torn out. By doing the scoring cut, I have eliminated that possibility. Now what this technique has allowed me to do, is to use my standard table saw as if it were a more expensive, scoring type table saw.
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