A simple wooden strip tacked to the bottom of the workpiece will let you rip panels that are too wide for the rip fence on your table saw. Size the wooden strip to run in the miter-gauge slot (generally 3/4 in. by 3/8 in.), and cut it slightly longer than the cut to be made. To lay out the strip’s location on the workpiece, I used a small piece of 1/8-in. thick birch plywood as a distance gauge. Tack the plywood to the strip, then run the assembly into the saw for about an inch. Turn the assembly over and mark on the plywood the strip’s location with a pencil line on both sides of the strip. Remove the plywood and you have a gauge that shows the exact relation of table slot to saw kerf.

To use the strip, draw an accurate cut-line on the back of the work. Now use the distance gauge to lay out the strip location, and brad the strip to the bottom of the work. Remember to position the strip so that the saw kerf is to the waste side of the cut-line. Turn the assembly over, feed the strip into the table slot and make the cut. If you have done the layout carefully, the cut will be right on. I use a thin-rim plywood blade, which, since the finished side of the work is up, produces a smooth, clean cut.

The procedure is not practical for the first cut on a 4×8 sheet of plywood or for quantity cutting. But it works fine for those 30-in. and 36-in. panels that are so awkward to cut on a small saw.

William Langdon, Lake Forest, Ill.

Fine Woodworking Magazine, June 1981 No. 28

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