Sometime after replying to tlt's story-board question yesterday, it hit me that I hadn't added my two cents to this thread.
My tip is to reduce the number of separate operations to as few as is practical. Most of us know the benefits of setting up a tool, once, and cutting all the same-sized pieces before changing the setup; but you can take it farther than that. A couple examples:
Say you're cutting a bunch of face frame members to length, using your compound miter saw. As has been mentioned, the smart way is to position a stop block so that all the matching pieces will be exactly the same length. Smarter yet is to stack up three or four or five pieces at a time -- up to the capacity of your CMS -- and save valuable shop time by cutting all of them at once.
Or say you're making an 8" deep plywood bookcase with fixed shelves. One approach would be to rip the two 8" wide end panels to size, then cut the dadoes for the shelves in each. If there are five shelves, that'd be 10 dado-cutting operations. But since you're working with plywood***, a better approach would be to cut the five dadoes first in a ~17" wide panel, then rip this large panel down to create the two ends. Cutting the dadoes first ensures they'll be in exactly the same places on both end panels; if you do cut one of the dadoes 1/4" off from whatever you intended, at least the shelf will sit level.
For both examples, there is a safety advantage: the fewer times you turn a power tool on, the fewer chances you have of getting hurt.
One important caveat to all this, however. Note that I said to reduce the number of separate operations to as few as is practical, not as is possible. If the cut will require you to maintain control over too many ganged-together pieces, or man-handle too large a plywood panel, find another way.
(***That's to say, the larger panel sizes possible with plywood offer method-of-work opportunities that might not exist with solid wood or glued-up panels. That's another aspect of this tip: always be on the lookout for ways the particular materials you are dealing with at the time can affect how you work, and the sequence in which you make the various cuts.)
My tip is to reduce the number of separate operations to as few as is practical. Most of us know the benefits of setting up a tool, once, and cutting all the same-sized pieces before changing the setup; but you can take it farther than that. A couple examples:
Say you're cutting a bunch of face frame members to length, using your compound miter saw. As has been mentioned, the smart way is to position a stop block so that all the matching pieces will be exactly the same length. Smarter yet is to stack up three or four or five pieces at a time -- up to the capacity of your CMS -- and save valuable shop time by cutting all of them at once.
Or say you're making an 8" deep plywood bookcase with fixed shelves. One approach would be to rip the two 8" wide end panels to size, then cut the dadoes for the shelves in each. If there are five shelves, that'd be 10 dado-cutting operations. But since you're working with plywood***, a better approach would be to cut the five dadoes first in a ~17" wide panel, then rip this large panel down to create the two ends. Cutting the dadoes first ensures they'll be in exactly the same places on both end panels; if you do cut one of the dadoes 1/4" off from whatever you intended, at least the shelf will sit level.
For both examples, there is a safety advantage: the fewer times you turn a power tool on, the fewer chances you have of getting hurt.
One important caveat to all this, however. Note that I said to reduce the number of separate operations to as few as is practical, not as is possible. If the cut will require you to maintain control over too many ganged-together pieces, or man-handle too large a plywood panel, find another way.
(***That's to say, the larger panel sizes possible with plywood offer method-of-work opportunities that might not exist with solid wood or glued-up panels. That's another aspect of this tip: always be on the lookout for ways the particular materials you are dealing with at the time can affect how you work, and the sequence in which you make the various cuts.)
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