How to Use a Table Saw: Rip Cuts, Crosscuts, and Safety for Beginners

Modern table saws ship with three safety features that work together. The clear plastic blade guard keeps your fingers from drifting into the blade and keeps sawdust off your face. Under the guard is the riving knife, a thin metal blade that sits just behind the saw blade. As the wood passes through, the riving knife holds the kerf open so the freshly cut wood can't pinch the blade and pitch back at you. Mounted to the riving knife are the anti-kickback pawls - small spring-loaded teeth that point opposite the blade rotation. If a board tries to kick back, those teeth bite the grain and lock it in place. Leave all three in place every time the saw is on.

The rip fence has to be perfectly parallel to the blade or every rip cut will burn, bind, or kick back. Portable saws get knocked around in trucks and on job sites, and the fence drifts. Raise the blade to its highest position so you can sight along it. Lock the fence wherever you like. Pick one tooth on the blade and rotate it to the front of the saw. Measure from the fence to that single tooth and write down the number. Then rotate the same tooth to the back of the saw and measure again. The two measurements must match. If they don't, loosen the fence-rail bolts and shift the back of the fence until they do.

Crank the blade up just enough that it clears the top of the wood by about a quarter to half an inch. No more. A blade running an inch above the workpiece looks intimidating and it should - the exposed teeth are the part that hurts you. A low blade has less surface to grab a board if something kicks back, and if your hand does slide into it, the cut is shallow instead of catastrophic. The shop teacher in Tom's story still has his fingers because the blade was set low. Same setting for rip cuts and crosscuts.

A rip cut runs the length of the board, along the grain. Set the fence to the finished width you want, then feed the board into the blade while holding it tight against the fence. Don't look at the blade. Look at where the board meets the fence. If there's a gap or the board lifts off the fence anywhere along its length, you're cutting at an angle and the kerf will close on the blade. Keep one hand pressed firmly sideways into the fence and the other hand pushing the board forward. When the trailing end of the board gets within six inches of the blade, switch to a push stick instead of your bare hand.

A crosscut runs across the grain. The single most dangerous mistake on a table saw is using the rip fence as a length stop for a crosscut. The short offcut gets trapped between the fence and the spinning blade, pinches, and rockets back at your face or drags your hand across the blade. So for crosscuts the rip fence is out of the picture. Slide it well clear of the cut zone or take it off entirely. Lower the blade so it barely clears the wood thickness, same as before - low blade height is even more important here because the workpiece sits crossways and is short on support.

Every table saw has a miter slot - the channel milled into the table on each side of the blade. The miter gauge slides into that slot and rides parallel to the blade. Set the gauge to 90 degrees for a square crosscut. Hold the board firmly against the face of the gauge with one hand and grip the gauge handle with the other. Push the gauge and the board across the blade together as a single unit. The gauge supports the board through the cut and keeps it from twisting. Your hands stay well behind the blade the whole time.

Need a stack of identical short pieces? A stop block does the job safely. Take a chunk of scrap wood and clamp or screw it to the rip fence near the very front of the table, well in front of the blade. Measure from the stop block to the blade and that's the length each piece will be. The block sets the position before the cut starts but leaves a gap between itself and the blade. When the offcut falls away after the cut, there's nothing to trap it - no pinching, no kickback. This is the same idea as a sliding stop on a miter saw, just built from a piece of scrap.

With the stop block set, hold the board flat against the face of the miter gauge and slide the leading edge against the stop block. That's your length. Now push the gauge forward. The board slides past the stop block immediately - it only used the block to register the length - and then meets the blade with nothing trapped against the fence. After the cut, the offcut falls into the empty space between the blade and the rip fence. You can reach across and lift it out safely once the blade has stopped. Repeat for as many pieces as you need, all identical, all safe.