(upbeat music) marc: well, woodworkers safety week is upon us already and i thought it'd be a great time to review some of the basic featherboards and push sticks that i use the most in my shop. now i've got a lot of different gadgets and i've tried a lot ofdifferent things over the years, but these are the thingsi find the most useful.
some of them i don'treally use that often, but i'm going to show those to you as well so at least you can see what's out there and then you can decide what's right for you in your shop. now let's talk about featherboards first. really a featherboard doesn't have to be anything more complicatedthan just a simple device that pushes the workpiece up against the fence
and the most basic versionor example that i could find is something as simple asthis shop-made version here. it's just a basic piece of oak with a bunch of slits cut in it, it's kept on an angle,and now these little pieces here are flexible. so as you push it and clamp it in place, push it against your work piece, it holds everything in place
and also stops it from kicking back. this has a natural resistance to pushing in the opposite direction so it's really one way only. but this being the most basic, there are a ton of littlegadgets on the market today and the big thing these days is magnets. okay, so you have, for instance, the magswitch brand hasa bunch of great little -
basically they have an on/off feature. one clockwise turn, the magnet's engaged, turn it back to the leftand it's completely loose and it's just a simpleplastic featherboard, nothing really fancy there. another one that's been around for awhile is the grip-tite magnetic featherboard. these guys operate witha simple plastic arm here on the side that'sa little bit flexible.
it's the same conceptwith a very strong magnet that holds it to the cast iron and you just flip thislittle arm in the back and that allows you to pop it off and move it to a different location. now the ones that i use the most tend to be the magnetic ones. i just love the factthat i can pretty much plop them anywhere down on the table
and move them around as needed. the magswitch in particularare one of my favorites because it's just so easy toturn the magnet on and off and move it all around. now one disadvantage you're going to find with a magnetic system is if you have a work piece that's just the right length that the magnet is rightover your miter slot, you're going to have sometrouble gripping there.
so that's definitelysomething to keep in mind and you may want to considerone of the other options or something that you can clamp to the table for some extra support. but let me show you how these work. it's pretty straightforward. most of the time these days, i use their universal unit, okay, because this way i can runit in multiple directions.
it's a little bit more versatile. now let's do a quick review of proper featherboard setup. if you're doing a through cut where you push this piece all the way through and you end up with two separate pieces, you absolutely cannot have your featherboard in line with the blade because if you do, the pressure from
the featherboard is going to push your off cut piece into the blade and that's going to kickback so that's no good. so if you are doing a through cut, bring your featherboard back a few inches before the blade. give yourself a good safe zone there. and typically i just give a little bit of pressure into my work piece
with the work piece in place, tighten it down, and you want just enough resistance so it's difficultto pull back toward you but with a little moderatepressure you could push forward. you don't want a whole lot of resistance when you're pushing forward. but that's really it. it's a very easy thing to set up and it really increases the overall safety
and the quality of the cut. now see the way this piece is sitting? if the featherboard had been up here, it definitely would have pushed this further into the blade causing a kickback and that would have beenextremely dangerous. now there's one thingthat i wanted to show you. it's not exactly a featherboard, it's a little bit different,but something very,
very useful to have in the shop. it's called a board buddy. at least that's the brand name. i believe there might be a couple of imitation versions of it on the market, but it always looks like this. it's a colored roller on a unit here, spring-loaded unit, thatwould attach to your fence. now i have a new fence system here.
i haven't had a chanceto put the little rail that goes in place and holds it in there so i can't show it to you in action, but the idea is you usuallyhave two of them here and this is great for sheet goods. as you're running the piece through, this wheel will spin,but it also puts downward and inward pressure onto your work piece so it kind of does the sameaction as a featherboard
and certain models onlyroll in one direction so it sort of helps as ananti-kickback roller as well. so these are very handy to have around, definitely a good thingto have on the saw, but it is a little bitmore in terms of setup. now contrary to what a lotof woodworkers believe, these are not pushsticks, these are fingers. you really don't want your fingers anywhere near a blade if you can help it.
so especially when you're within what i call sort of the danger zone and a zero clearance insert is actually a great item for giving you an idea of what a danger zone is at the table saw. i also have an overarm blade guard that does the same thing. it gives me an effective zone that i know i should not have my hands anywhere near.
so if you're not sure, it's nice to have those as gentle reminders. if you are in a case where you're getting too close to the blade, it's great to have somesort of push stick. some of these are more basic designs that have come with thetools that i've purchased. these two here, one is plastic,it's a little bit thicker. the other is an aluminium shaft here
and it's a little bit thinner so it's nice 'cause you can get right in there, but a lot of peopledon't like the fact that this is made out of metal because if that hits the blade you've got shards of metal flying into the air. at least if this guy hits the blade, it's plastic, it's less likely to shatter. it's probably just goingto cut the plastic.
either way, you don't wantto touch the blade anyway so, you know, whichever one you're more comfortable using. my favorite push stick by faris this very simple design. the idea here is that it'sgot a little hook at the back which catches onto the work piece, a little rubber foot in the front that helps you get a little grip, and i've got full control.
the other thing is just by the nature of the way this is being gripped, it applies a lot of forwardpressure to the work piece. so as i'm pushing forward, i'm not ony hooked on the back and giving it that forward motion, it's just by natureputting downward pressure on the work piece as well. now one variation of a push stick,
it's a little bit more priceybut it does a lot more. it's called a grr-ripper, kind of like a g-r-r likegrr, growling, gripper. the idea here is for small parts, even larger parts like this, it works really well. it's got a little foot on the outside that helps you balance it out and this little piece in the middle
can actually move back and forth to adjust for really small pieces. so a lot of times people ask me, "how do you cut those really thin strips?" let's say you're making some ebony pegs or something like that and you need to cut a little tiny strip of wood here. well, first of all, you could cut it from the outside of the piece.
that's certainly one safer option. but if you want to make, you know, little 1/4 inch cuts,if you have something like this grr-ripper where this tiny little arm here in the back, if that safely fits betweenthe blade and the fence, you're actually okay to go ahead and set this up like this, make sure your foot isthere to balance it out,
and push that piece throughand make that cut safely because now my hands are removed and i've got complete control. these little rubber grippy pads down here will help you force it into the fence and get it safely through that cut. 1/4 inch, you're really pushing your luck. you want to be very careful with that. i probably would cut on the outside
for that particular type of a cut, but you can get pretty darn close. you'll just have to decide how safe is safe enough for your shop. so let's go ahead andmake a couple test cuts. i'll show you how simple this unit is and then i'll show youhow the grr-ripper works. now i'm going to makea roughly one inch cut, cut a one inch strip from this piece here.
so i'm going to take my grr-ripper and make sure that my spacing is such that the blade goes right in between this middle pad and the outer pad. and as long as it travelssafely in the middle, i know i can make thiscut with no problem. tighten it down. okay, get the work piece in place, make sure it's all theway against the fence.
and, in fact, i usually putit down on the work piece and then push both this and the work piece into the fence so by the time i hit i know everything is asfar over as it needs to be. okay, let's make that cut. and there you go. a nice thin strip and apretty safe cut at that. now whether you make your own or you're buying thecommercially made stuff,
hopefully you'll seenow that featherboards and push sticks really should be part of your every day workflow. they make things a lot safer and it's going to increasethe quality of your work. thanks for watching. we'll catch you next time.