How to safely cut lots of small pieces on the table saw.

[Joe Hillmann]

I want to make several sets of dominoes and am trying to figure out a safe, quick way to cut them on the table saw. I am trying to cut the dominoes to length with a stop on my miter gauge. I am cutting 4 at a time. If I run the gauge all the way past the blade about 50% of the time the back side of the blade hits one of the cut off pieces and sends it flying or puts a nick in it.

What I ended up doing for the first set is stack up for strips, run them through the blade, stop when the pieces are clear of the teeth at the front of the blade but not yet to the teeth at the back of the blade, shut off the saw, wait for it to stop, pick the pieces up, then start all over again. It gives me nice smooth pieces safely but all that starting and stopping is SLOW.

Is there a safe way to speed up making these dominoes?

[John Schweikert]

The safest thing to do is build a table sled. I built one for my Bosch saw and find that I can cut all sorts of sized pieces. If you build a sled so both sides of the cut are clamped then there is zero risk of a small piece getting caught in the blade and thrown out.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe.....John's got the right idea!

A friend is Catholic and makes rosaries. He's got me cutting pieces that are 3/16" thick by 5/16".....Joined with half laps.....one piece is 1 1/16" long.....the other is 1 7/8" long....... All of it done with a sled which has hold downs and an adjustable stop block. My hands remain on a 5" high white oak fence over a foot away from the blade.

Last Friday I milled the material to 5/16 thick and ripped to 3/16" wide.

Saturday in a couple hours we took the pieces, milled the half lap joints and then cut the pieces to length. All of it is done using the adjustable stop block, thickness and length gauge blocks to set the right lengths so that it is incredibly accurate. In a couple hours we made enough for about 100 crosses. Once the gauges were made a couple months ago, we don't measure anything....just use the gauge blocks for setup.

[John Schweikert]

I use a Rockler clamp when I need repeatable sized cuts.



And for demonstration, here are small pieces held down.



Making the t slots for clamps closer or just more of them for options can open up possibilities. I'll probably add more t slots at some point.

[Stephen Cherry]

How about a sled with a stop block and a destaco clamp?

[David L Morse]

Nice Sled! This is a really good reason to build one right now. If that's not an option there are other approaches. I would attach an extension piece to the miter gauge and the stop block to that. Stack the strips against the extension and hold them there with a spring clamp. There's no need to go all the way through the blade since the parts are clamped. The cutoffs should fall to the side. Pull the miter gauge back far enough so the pieces drop into the small box taped to the fence rail when you release the clamp and repeat.

Note that I am not certifying the safety of this procedure but only offering it as something I would do.

This is a pic of a quick mockup - not anything useful as is!
0319132118.jpg

[Bruce Wrenn]

Two ideas. First a blast of air to remove cut offs, or a shop vacuum to pick them up. I've seen tips using both ideas. Air hose could be connected to top of backer board on miter gauge fence, angled away from the blade. A foot valve made from a blow off tool (ShopNotes #108) could control air blast. Maybe even a combination of the two.

[Joe Hillmann]

Two ideas. First a blast of air to remove cut offs, or a shop vacuum to pick them up. I've seen tips using both ideas. Air hose could be connected to top of backer board on miter gauge fence, angled away from the blade. A foot valve made from a blow off tool (ShopNotes #108) could control air blast. Maybe even a combination of the two.

I tried with the shopvac, it didn't have enough suction, I never thought of using air. If there is a next batch I will give that a try. Right now I am having a hard time getting the laser to do a perfect mark on more then 5 at a time. I was hopping I could put 4 sets in at one time, hit go, and twenty minutes later pull out four perfect sets of dominoes. I won't go much further with this until I get that problem solved.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe....here's an idea....have you ever watched Norm cut plugs to fill countersunk screw holes? He drills a bunch of plugs using a plug cutter and then cuts them free from the block of wood on the tablesaw. Recently

Try taking a piece of wood say 3/4" thick.....rip the "dominos" in both planes say 3/8" deep into the wood. Then lay painters over them to catch then and stand the wood on edge ....... rip them free with the bandsaw or table saw.....

A recent tip from Woodsmith magazine used this same method to cut plugs to plug

[Michael W. Clark]

I think with either the sled or miter gauge, you may have to hold down the cutoff pieces to get the quality you want and avoid the chance of one coming back. A destaco or carr-lane type clamp would probably work well to hold down the offcuts. Using the sled, I have used the eraser end of a pencil. It works well to hold the small peices down and to move them out of the way to slide the stock over for the next cut.

If you can make the miter gauge work and push all the way through the blade so you can dump the pieces at the end of the table, it may be faster. Maybe instead of stacking the pieces on top of each other, you stack them in front of each other? This way the blade is not as high and less prone to kick one of them, but you probably still need to secure the offcuts if cutting multiples.

[Joe Hillmann]

Ken, the problem with that for what I am doing is the finished surface is whatever is left by the table saw. The way I am doing it now the finished surface on all but the ends is what is left by the planer

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Joe....I will post a photo shortly of my small parts sled. I think if you rotated my clamps 90º, it would be pretty fast for you. The stuff I am cutting is much smaller so I have to use some different hold down arms in conjunction with the clamps. It will be more readily apparent when you see the sled.

Back in a couple minutes with some photos.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

So here's the deal.....I mill slabs of wood 5/16" thick and then rip them into 3/16" wide pieces. So each cross is made of 2 pieces of 3/16" by 5/16" wood. Each piece has a half-lap joint cut into it. The vertical piece is 1 7/8" long. The cross piece is 1 1/16" long. The pieces are so small that just the wind from the saw blade spinning was moving them even when lightly clamped on psa sandpaper. So I added these locking clamps to put much more pressure on the arms. Thus, this past Saturday, we made hundred crosses in a little over 2 hours and that included milling the half-lap joints and cutting them to length. I use a straightedge pushed up through the saw blade slot and gauges blocks to set the lengths and the width for the half-lap joints. Since we made the gauge blocks, nothing is measured. It's incredibly simple, accurate and fast.

In the case of dominoes....I would NOT use the arms as I do with these smaller items but would rotate the locking clamps 90º so the handles are pointing away from the fence with the stop block and use the stop block. Slide the finished material over until it touches the stop block, lock both clamps, cut, pull the sled back clear of the blade...unlock both clamps....remove the cut domino......slide material over to the stop block.....lock both clamps....and repeat the process.....



sps1.jpgThe two knobs lock the stop block. I used t-track on the adjustable stop block.

sps4.jpgHere's looking down on the two arms that hold the material to the surface of the sled. If you look close you can see some of the material we actual use. The two locking clamps apply pressure to keep the small parts from moving while milling the half-lap joints and cutting to length.

sps5.jpgHere you get a better picture of what is happening. There is a small piece of the material for the crosses be held in place in these photos. For cutting the dominoes, I would just rotate the clamps and just use them to hold the material while cutting.


sps8.jpg In this prhto....the clamps are released....the painter's tape in the upper left is holding some spare arm material to the sled. The painter's tape on the right is holding the gauge blocks for the crosses to the sled. It might be a couple months before I need to make any more crosses for my buddy and I don't want to loose the gauge blocks or the spare arms in case one breaks in the future.

To give you an idea of the material size we are cutting....this last photo....

sps2.jpgThe material in it's widest plane is barely wider than a common pencil...in it's narrowest plane it isn't as wide as a pencil.

[Shaddy Dedmore]

I use an accurately cut piece of scrap taped to the table against the fence close to the front, put the piece to be cut up against that instead of the fence. Then use the miter with a sacrificial backer. You can use a long scrap piece or a pencil to scoot the pieces out of the way. To get more room between the fence and the blade, use a wider piece of scrap against the fence.

Hard for me to articulate. Sorry. For the scrap piece, cut it to like, 5 inches. Then add 5 inches to the fence. As in, if you want it to cut 2 inches, set the fence to 7 inches, use carpet tape to secure the 5" piece against the fence close to the front of the table. No remeasuring, no worry of things getting pinched and thrown from the blade. easy to use a pencil or push block to scoot the cut offs around. If you want more room, just make the 5" piece 10" or whatever.

As for the lasering, did you cut a template first? Take a series of squares and cut out a 1/8" ply or MDF. Then you can line up the dominoes to your engraving. Let me know if you want more info on that.

Shaddy

[Rick Potter]

Never made dominos, but I made a LOT of Lincoln Logs. After dadoing the grooves and cutting the wide piece into long narrow strips of single filler blocks, I then had to cut them off individually. In all, I made over 20,000 cuts making them.

To cut off the small singles, I simply put a sacrificial addition on to my miter gage, with a stop block. I made a cut, went past the blade, then pulled the miter gage back, which left the 1 1/2" piece laying in front of the blade. The next cut moved it forward a bit, then the next and the next. Pretty soon there was a line of the little buggers out to the end of the table where they fell into a 30 gallon trash can, which, as I remember, I filled twice. Lost a few, not many. I stuck a couple runners on the table to guide them into the can.

A couple tips. If I were doing it again, I would use the narrowest kerf Skil Saw finish blade I could find.....less wind to move small pieces. I also used a splitter to keep the pieces from going toward the blade, this would be a good time for a special zero clearance blade insert with the blade raised very little, and a small splitter up close, that the miter gage could go right over.

Rick Potter