Page 8 - Jigs, Tips and Tricks

Many people think the jigsaw is only good for making curved cuts. We show you how to use a fence and choose the right blade to make straight cuts with your jigsaw.

A router guide collar is a useful accessory that threads onto a router base and guides the router along a pattern or template. The one safety concern with guide collars is that they can loosen and possibly fall off, causing damage to your work or maybe an injury. You can make sure that your guide collar won't loosen by using PTFE ahead tape (also called teflon tape) to wrap around the treads. You can find this special tape in the plumbing section of most hardware stores.

Learn how to cut accurate tenons using a table saw. You can use a regular saw blade or a dado set to cut the tenons for mortise and tenon joints.

When you need to cut multiple cross lap joints with uniform spacing, reach for the Rockler Cross Lap Jig. Screw it to your miter gauge and use it with your table saw and a dado stack to cut the half-lap joints for anything with a wooden grid: lattice, wine racks, grilles/mullions for glass doors, and torsion boxes for your workbenches and table tops.

The best way to store a band saw blade is in a coil, the way it came from the factory. Learn how to fold your band saw blade into a coil.

One of the best ways to fix dents in woodworking projects or furniture is to use heat and steam. Apply a few drops of water to the dent and then apply heat using a scrap of cloth and an iron.

Every table saw comes with a miter gauge, and they’re made for making crosscuts and angled cuts. So why do you need a crosscut sled? There are four good reasons why a crosscut sled can improve your safety and accuracy at the table saw. Chris Marshall will show you all four in this video. So, whether you’re crosscutting big stock or little tiny workpieces, or making repetitive cuts or angled cuts. A crosscut sled can improve your safety and accuracy at the table saw.

If your table saw, miter saw, or circular saw isn't cutting well, the solution may be as simple as cleaning the blade. Cleaning your saw blade is an easy way to improve your saw's cutting performance.

Removing screws that have a stripped head can be frustrating. There are lots of reasons a screw head can strip, but one of the easiest ways to remove a screw that has a stripped head is to use a screw extractor bit. An extractor bit features two ends. One end looks a little like a short twist drill bit, and it is called the burnisher. The burnisher cuts away some of the stripped original driver profile, leaving a clean surface. The other end is the extractor, which features sharpened threads that are cut in the opposite direction of ordinary screw threads. The extractor end bites into the screw head and turns it when the drill is run in the reverse direction.

This DIY circular saw cutting guide will help you make straight and accurate cuts with your circular saw. Learn how to make this saw guide. You only need a couple pieces of thin sheet stock to make this guide and it will work with just about any circular saw. You can also make the same type of cutting guide for your jig saw.

Take a break from building your woodworking projects to make sure you’re stocked up on the supplies that you use on almost every project. Whether you’re sanding, doing a glue-up, applying finish or cleaning your bits and blades, there are supplies here you’re going to need for almost everything you build. !