Now Jessica carefully marks the
centerline of the plank. If we cut the blank into two 4" wide pieces, we can
then resaw the 4" depths.
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She carefully places the guide rail to
her marks and attaches a clamp at this end.
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She makes the cut.
Does it look like Jessica is making this cut effortlessly? She is indeed.
The guide rail gives her the accuracy of staying exactly on the line and all
she has to do is push it forward. With the Panther blade doing the
work, it is an easy cut to make. Even making the deep cut, the dust
extraction system takes away almost all of the very fine dust. We were
both surprised at how easy this large model of the Festool Plunge Saw was to
use.
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With a bit of
a stretch Jessica can complete the cut. The boom arm does such a great job
of keeping the dust extraction hose and power cord up out of the way of the
saw.
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When she has
completed the cut, Jessica returns the saw to its safe storage position on
top of its Systainer which is locked to the vacuum.
This view shows exactly how the boom is configured. It is really
cool. It is hard to think of working without it, even though we did just that
for the two years before its installation.
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She poses quite pleased with her cut
down the center of the heavy plank. They are not "just close" to being exact
halves, they are exact halves.
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Now Jessica uses her straight edge to
divide the piece into thirds.
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She sets the small adjustable
square to the center of that mark.
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She uses the adjustable square to mark
the board at the one-third point. The pencil mark is hard to see without
making the mark really thick so she uses an old trick of mine — she taps a single
edge razor blade right at the end of the square. A few taps and it will stay
in place long enough to do the same at the other end.
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One word of caution: do not forget to
remove the two blades before making the cut — and no, I have not done that
yet. The small blades get lost easily so when I remove two from the pack for
use in this way, I take a small scrap of wood to keep them safe in between
uses — and it allows me to "inventory" them real quick.
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