In any construction, it is important that you have a reliable and productive tool in your hands, with which the work will go much faster.
When I was going to build a house with my own hands, I tried to think in advance what operations and what tools I would do. Since the building was supposed to be frame, it turned out that the largest number of operations was the exact cutting of the racks in length.
Initially, I wanted to do it with a hand hacksaw and even thought of designing a conductor for precise cutting. But the longer I thought about it, the more I doubted the success of such a technology. The next solution is to use a manual circular. But here it was necessary to secure a guide stop for each cut. In the end, I decided to buy a miter saw.
Choosing a saw and making a workbench
The frame of the house had to be assembled from boards with a width of 150 and 200 mm, so I needed a tool with a cutting width of at least 200 mm. I started researching the market, looking at models and prices. In the end, I settled on the Jet JSMS-8L saw. It can be used to cut wide boards, since the saw blade with the motor moves along the guides.
The construction time came closer to summer. To make it convenient to use the saw, you need a workbench. I had to puzzle out how to make it easier. As a result, he built old floor boards, which, just in case, he did not disassemble into small plates. As one longitudinal support, I used a beam of the lower binding of the frame, and propped up the other side of the shield with pieces of boards. I screwed the saw with screws-capercaillie Ø 8 mm.
Conductor for racks
In order for the end of the cut board to turn out to be strictly rectangular, it is necessary to fix it so that the saw blade turns out to be perpendicular to both the plank and its edge. To do this, when facing the board, it is necessary to clearly fix it in height and in relation to the plane of the disk. The height of the saw platform is 75 mm, so I used 50 and 25 mm thick trimmings screwed to the workbench on both sides of the saw as a stand.
In this case, the material was in the same plane with the saw table. Having laid the blank on the left lining and the table, I stuck the right end of the board. Then he dragged it to the right — and stuck the left end.
On each of the stands, I fixed a steel corner that serves as a side stop for the workpiece. For their precise installation, I used a rectangular flat aluminum profile with a length of 2 m. One end pressed it tightly against the saw guides. And the second end served as a reference point for fixing the corner.
In order to accurately cut off the workpiece of the desired length, I attached a wooden triangular stop to the right of the saw, precisely checking its position.
Working with a saw
Before starting work, I had to deal with the mechanism. The first thing to do was to correct the tilt scale, since the disk was not perpendicular to the guides. A simple school square helped to set the disk. Then I studied all the adjusting, locking, locking and other structural elements. The laser sight turned out to be useful, but not always: in sunny weather it is not visible.
Working with the saw showed that the cut turns out to be of high quality, but it is important to keep in mind that for a clean cut it is necessary to make a passage back and forth. In the process of sawing sawdust throws back and up — and if the wind was in my face, I found myself covered in sawdust. Next season I will think about deflecting the air jet with sawdust down.
To prevent the tool from rusting from the night dew, I unscrewed it at night and took it to the garage. When re-installing in the same place, due to the backlash in the mounting holes, it was necessary to check the position of the saw. When the time comes to cut the boards of a different length, I will add additional supports-stops.