Featherboards for tapered wood
rianquinn
| Posted in Jigs, Fixtures, Tips & Tricks on
The wood that I get is often tapered, causing the featherboard to loss its grip near the end o the board. My primary use for the featherboards is to keep the lumber straight, as I cannot manage to cut a board straight on the tablesaw by hand (keeping the board flat against the fence while pushing it is not as easy as it looks).
My only idea is to cut the board once without the featherboard, and then cut it s second time to get the straight cut with the featherboard (after the taper has been removed).
Thoughts / Ideas?
Replies
You will need to come up with a pivot and spring
arrangement to account for the varying widths. Why you need such a setup to simply rip on a table saw I haven't a clue. You would be better served by reviewing your milling practices for preparing your stock, as well as the setup and alignment of your saw.
Back To Basics
Rob is right - examine process and adjust.
My typical process is to cross cut rough lumber to rough length, rip on tablesaw to rough width - no feather boards or contraptions needed - face and edge on the jointer, plane to thickenss and then rip to finished width. Again, no featherboards or other contraptions required.
use your hand as a feather board
Stock prep is important, but even jointing a face and an edge - you still have a tapered board. So..
What I do is to use my left hand (my right is busy pushing the board) as a 'variable' featherboard: the areas between the first joint and the second joint are on the table and the side of the first finger is against the edge of the board keeping it against the fence and the thumb is on top of the board keeping it from rising up in the blade. As the taper goes past you just pres towards the fence.
BUT YOU MUST KEEP THE LEFT HAND WELL BACK FROM THE BLADE AND NOT LET THE FORWARD MOTION OF THE BOARD PULL YOU INTO THE BLADE.
Not as hard or dangerous as it sounds., just keep the left hand planted on the table a few inches back from the blade. If the board is full of splinters, wear a glove. This is not the recommendation around rotating equipment, but you are staying away from the blade.
I have to be away for a few days, but when I have time I will try to take a pic showing you what I mean. PM me if you want a direct post, but it will be after 12/10.
Forrest
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