But first, I needed to make a raised panel cutting jig. Which, if you'll allow me to descend into full-on woodworking nerd for a minute, I shall explain...
Okay, so my kick-ass table saw has two unrelated, but contributory flaws:
- First, it has a right-tilting arbor. This means that when I'm making an angle cut, the blade tilts to the right - towards the fence. This is fine, provided I'm working on a piece that's large enough to keep my hand (or push stick) well away from the blade, and the angle required is no more than 45-degrees, which is the maximum the saw will tilt.
- Second, I have a router table built into the wing on the left side of my saw, and it has its own fence system. This means that I can't move the table saw fence very far to the left side of the blade. The fence needs a certain amount of rail to clamp onto, and with the fence for the router table in the way, the most I can get on the left side of the blade is about an inch - maybe. (You can see the whole set up - router wing, fence system, blade position - in this picture from an old post.)
When I made the last door, I managed to get the fence set up with just enough room to spare that I could cut the angles on the panels, but it was dicey, and felt decidedly unsafe. Given that a larger door meant I'd be dealing with larger panels, I decided that I had to come up with some way to cut panels the met some rather stringent criteria:
- It had to be safe. I really don't like getting my fingers any closer to the spinning blade of a table saw than I absolutely have to. I already stuck the tip of my right index finger into a table saw once (many, many, many moons ago), and I have no desire whatsoever to do it again. That meant that there had to be some way to hold the panel steady or guide it through the blade without me needing to brace it with my hands.
- It had to be adjustable. I was okay if the angle of the saw was set to the exact same angle for every panel, but I wanted to be able to cut thicker panels if I ever had the need.
- It needed to fit on the left side of the blade. This meant that it had to either use the fence for the router table as a brace, or fit into the miter slot.
After some research and more than a little planning and revising, I finally figured out something that I thought might work. I had to incorporate design elements from maybe a half-dozen different sources, but got the bones of the jig from this article, which - ironically enough - is designed for a left-tiling arbor.
Anyway, it took me the better part of a day to build it, but in the end, I made myself a raised panel cutting jig:
It sits in the left miter slot, and is secured using a couple of miter locks (borrowed from a Kreg featherboard system). The tall fence can be moved away from the blade to a maximum distance of an inch and a quarter, or nudged up to within a few thousandths of an inch. I had originally thought to build a carriage that would guide the panel through the blade, but discarded that plan in favor of using the same featherboard set-up that worked so well the last time. The saw blade must be positioned at 11-degrees, but that gives a nice wide bevel on a 3/4" panel.
Here it is all ready to cut some rasied panels:
With the featherboard holding the panel tight to the extra-tall fence, all I have to do is guide the material straight through the blade. Works like a charm, and feels way, way, way safer than the last time.
I suppose now you want to know what a raised panel is, eh?
Fine. These are panels:
And after being passed safely through the table saw using my raised panel cutting jig, these are raised panels:
And there was much rejoicing and drinking of the beers.
