Table saw

Also called: circular saw bench, sawbench, bench saw

A table saw is a woodworking machine built around a circular blade that sticks up through a slot in a flat table. Unlike a handheld circular saw, the blade stays fixed in one place; Frid (1979) explains that it is the wood that moves, pushed by the woodworker across the table and into the spinning blade.

What it is used for

The table saw is often the first serious machine a woodworker buys, and Bird (2004) writes that most people start out in the craft with one. Jigs and Fixtures (2004) describes it as one of the two most versatile machines in a shop, alongside the router, since it will cut both solid wood and sheet material such as plywood down to precise sizes. Jigs built around it commonly handle crosscutting, which means cutting across the width of a board rather than along its length, and mitring, cutting two pieces at matching angles, commonly forty-five degrees, so they meet at a corner. Other jigs cut tenons, the projecting tongues that fit into a matching slot on another piece, cut box joints, interlocking square-fingered joints often used at corners, or break large sheets of plywood down into manageable pieces. Like other circular saws, a table saw is sized and described first by the diameter of its blade, a convention Hylton (2005) notes it shares with the handheld circular saw, the chop saw, and the radial arm saw. Writing about equipping a furniture workshop, Joyce (1987) lists the table saw, together with the planer and the band saw, as the machines that come first when only the most basic set can be afforded. The same book notes that in industry a table saw's usual jobs are crosscutting random lengths of plank and ripping sheets of plywood, cutting them along their length, though sheets too large for an ordinary table saw to handle are ripped on larger dedicated panel saws instead.

Joints it is suited to

A housing joint, called a dado in American usage, is a full-width slot cut across a board to house the end of a shelf or partition. Noll (2002) describes cutting one on a table saw with a dado cutter, a widened cutter or stack of blades, matched to the thickness of the shelf, with a scrap fence screwed to the mitre gauge to set the spacing. He notes that this housing joint is sometimes left short of the front edge, rather than run the full width of the board, for a neater appearance. For a tenon's tongue, Rogowski (2002) describes trimming its end on the table saw to match the depth of the mortise it will enter, the slot cut into the other piece to receive it. Duginske (1999) makes a related point: because a crosscut on a table saw tends to run very slightly deeper than a rip cut made with the same blade, the crosscut that forms a tenon's shoulder is often better made on the table saw than by another method. The table saw can also cut a cove, a concave curve run along the face of a board, by feeding the stock across the blade at an angle; Hylton (2005) notes that the resulting profile is typically supported with blocks of scrap wood cut into a triangular shape. For mitred joints in sheet material, Wearing (2010) describes a jig for cutting a groove for the mitre on the table saw, and cautions that it should only be used with plywood or other multi-ply board, because solid wood can shrink or swell enough to throw off the accuracy of the forty-five degree angle.

Where it can catch you out

A stopped cut, one that ends partway along a board instead of running off the end, is awkward on a table saw, especially across the grain, the direction the wood fibres run. Noll (2002) warns that it is a hazardous cut to make, and that the blade leaves a curved kerf, the slot cut by the blade, at the stopping point, which then has to be squared up by hand. Rogowski (2002) adds a further caution: even with a stop clamped to the fence, lifting the back of a board off a stopped cut can cause it to catch and kick. Comparing the table saw with the radial arm saw, Frid (1979) argues firmly for the table saw, calling the radial arm saw more limited, harder to use, less accurate for fine joinery, and unable to perform every operation a table saw can.

An older name

The table saw has gone by other names. Riley (1905), writing in a British trade examination text, calls it a circular saw bench, and sets students the tasks of sketching the ordinary type of bench and describing how the feeding arrangements differ between types, a reminder that the machine and its terminology are well over a century old.