Safer Way to Rip Bevels?

[Joseph Tarantino]

sounds like you are trying to make a panel raising cut. i threw this together out of scrap:

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to do this:

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the stop at the rear of the jig keeps it from sliding backwards, away from the blade, and by clampling the workpiece to the jig, the workpiece rides through the blade as the jig slides along the rip fence.

[Floyd Mah]

If you are going through the trouble of making a jig, then make the bed of the jig at an angle and keep the blade vertical. Then use clamps to hold the workpiece in place. You could even incorporate this in an existing table saw sled without much fuss. By doing this, you won't have to worry about trapping the workpiece under the tilted blade. Use a zero clearance insert to avoid trapping the cut-off. Having just come back from the dentist this afternoon, I can say that the dentist usually maintains the same work position and tilts the patient or his mirror to accommodate working on the different tooth locations.

[Harvey Pascoe]

I thought of the jointer but I couldn't see how I could get a 25 degree angle when the fence only went down to 45. What you are saying is that you are reorienting the bevel to the base of the workpiece by making a thicker board and resawing it to shape after making the bevel? In other words the edge becomes the face but you have a glue joint in it?

[Joe Fabbri]

I just made a handfull of moldings on a table saw, where I had to cut the spring angle bevels. The pieces were 1x material, so it really had very little base to stand on after the blade of the saw. What I did was flip both boards around, so that the area to be cut would be facing out on both boards, then I made both boards flush together, and nailed them together with some small finish nails (about three nails--they were only 3 foot boards). This way, I made one cut, with full support of the other board, then I cut the other side (keeping the fence in the same setting), and although you end up with less support on the last cut, you still have a fair amount to ride ontop of the table.

It still felt a bit risky on the table saw, but definitely better than running it through individually.

If you have a very steady saw, I suppose you could nail the boards to be cut against an even wider stock, and then have all that much more support.

This is all figuring you don't mind driving a few nails or screws into your finished boards. Mine are going to be painted, so it's no big deal.

I just cut the vital bevel this way (that is, the one that will spring from the wall--the top spring bevel is not nest against anything in my case). For the other spring angles, I planed them down. They might be slightly off, but I have more control with a plane, and less chance of jagged cuts if the boards moves, which it does if your fence isn't so tall, or if you don't use featherboards to keep the base tight to the fence as it's going through.

Joe