Sewing Center #2

Well, I bought all the wood for this project a couple weeks ago and I always have a hard time cutting large pieces straight because my table saw didn’t have a very long fence. I bought a large one about two years ago, was kind of intimidated to try putting it on, but I finally did. I had to put a new arbor on my table saw too, the pulley that holds the belt kept working it’s way off, so when I ordered that part, since I couldn’t use the saw, it was a good time to put the new fence on. Anyway, I finished that yesterday, finally, so got to start on the sewing center.

I hope this isn’t too detailed, I’m not sure if it will continue to be that way, but I decided to do it for now because the reason I do some of the things I do is because I have had a problem in the past. You’ll kinda get the idea as I go along I think.

The first thing I did right after I bought the wood is cut the sheets of plywood down to managable pieces. I live alone and don’t have anyone to help me wrestle the sheets onto my table saw so I cut the wood up as much as possible with my skill saw. I always put blue tape on the areas I am sawing, it seems to help the wood not splinter. My plans actually had a cutting layout so it made it easy for me to do this. I always cut the pieces large and make sure I have a factory edge on at least one side when I am cutting it down. That will be the edge that will go against the table saw fence.

Today I pulled out the sheets for the pieces I wanted to cut to correct size. As you can see in the next picture, I put blue tape over all my cuts on my table saw too. I have had a problem with tearout in the past, so now I religiously do this. I’m not even sure I really need to anymore, but it’s a habit I can’t bring myself to break.

You can see my new fence and extension table I made in this pic too! And my workbench/cabinet in the background I made a couple years ago.

Another thing I do is label all the pieces with what piece they are (A,B,C etc) and I write the measurements and which direction the measurement is supposed to go. For instance, this is piece B, I need two of them and it has to be 8 1/4 inches in the direction of the arrow.

So, after I measure and label everything I cut all the same measurements at once. For instance, I had several pieces with a 15 1/8” measurement, but the other side of the piece varied. So I cut all the 15 1/8” side first, all of these would match exactly that way and then I moved the fence for each of the other measurements. Here is a pic of all the pieces I cut today, I cut everything for the two sides with the drawers and the back of the table.

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