This is what drives me NUTS (uneven TS rip cut)

Dan,
There will be good days and bad days with woodworking. There are a couple of things you can do to rip very straight.
You can use a feather board that clamps into the miter slot. I use one that has a roller on a spring. The standard feather board will do just fine.
Your fence might be out of alignment. Either pushing into or away from the blade. If this is so, you will also be subjected to a possible kick back situation.
Using the Grr-Ripper push system will be much safer and accurate than using push sticks.
There are roller hold downs that help guide the board along the fence.
Sometimes you can use these things together.
One more thing comes to mind is that the board may not be perfectly parallel. It may be 1/32” narrower on one end compared with the other.
I am sure with some practice and guidance you will be able to rip a straight board.

Good Luck and have fun with woodworking.

-- Oldworld, Fair Oaks, Ca

John – Thanks for the reply. I did use one of those plastic fingerboards that goes in the miter slot to push the board against the fence. I do have a Grripper, but in this case I used a “push board” for lack of a better term which I made with a nub to catch the end of the board & enough length to exert downward pressure. When I initially got the saw, I set the fence parallel to the miter slot using a dial indicator, I can check it again. I’m familiar with the 2 schools of thought on this, slightly tilted away to avoid kickback or parallel, I opt for the latter. The board in question was jointed & planed & was true. The wider piece is wider along it’s entire length by the same degree. It’s weird, I was very careful with everything as far as I can tell, obviously something’s off, but I sure don’t know what.

Do you watch the blade or the fence during the cut? Watching the blade will allow the workpiece to drift away from the fence. Keep your eyes on the fence, and maintain pressure against it.

-- Furniture Medic- the prescription for damaged furniture

I don’t know what sort of fence you have but some will move slightly when you lock them in place. I often use a test piece if I need accuracy. I have the magswitch featherboard which is invaluable (holds laterally & vertically. See review below. Good luck.
http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/69

-- Grumpy - "Always look on the bright side of life"- Monty Python

One solution is to start with a boards about 1/8” wider than your final width.
Mark the blade to fence distance carefully to allow for and extra 1/16” on the first pass.
You nnow should have two boards of differnt widths so don’t panic. Set your fence at the final width and take a skimming pass off the board at the proper width.
Do the same for the other board without changing the fence .
Use feather boards on the pieces to keep the work against the fence.
If you have a planer this is usually where this matching is done.

p.s. do you do a test piece before running the part?

Good luck

Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

To recap what I see as the two most important things mentioned:

1) Make sure you are still dead centered on your mark after locking the fence in place
2)Make sure your piece is not drifting during the cut.

That being said, I find it is just EXTREMELY difficult to rip a board into equal halves. Think about it… if your cut is just 1/64 off center, you are taking 1/64 too much from one piece and adding 1/64 to the other. So the net difference in piece size will be 1/32.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Did I miss someone saying it, but has the fence been checked for movement and whether it’s parallel to the blade?

Quick and dirty test: take a short piece of ply – against the rip fence cut in about 1”. Power off and unplug the saw. check it on the front of the blade and it’s tight, mark that tooth and rotate the blade so it’s at the back of the table. Recheck it there against the same tooth. Is it the same?

Now without changing any settings, rip a piece of wood. Is the wood accurately cut? Do the same tests, does it still check out ok?

If these check out then it’s probably technique. If they don’t then something is incorrect in your saw or fence setup.

Hope that helps.

Paul

The fence moving when you lock it down is definitely something that can bite you. I thought my fence was broken when I figured out it did this. Test cuts are definitely the way to go when something has to be dead on though.

-- I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso

Instead of trying to cut the board in half, my solution is to cut it just shy of half then take the cut off piece and run it through the saw at the same setting. Works for me.

-- Bruce from Central New York

I agree with Bruce, I avoid ripping a board in half to final dimension altogether. You are better off starting off with a board that is slightly larger then what you need. Set your fence to the width you need and make two cuts. It will take you 30 seconds longer but save you in the long run.

-- Brian, Folsom, CA http://www.brianfullerdesigns.com

It’s hard to eyeball the center of the board, no matter how it is marked, with the center of the saw blade. Especially if you are leaning over the saw trying to do so.

I’m with the others—- start with a slightly larger board and rip it twice. You’ll be much happier with the outcome than the way you have tried it. The good part of this method – is you’ll save your sanity.

-- Betsy - GO BUCKS!

One thing that I do, to be sure I’m in the Middle:

Using a piece of scrap of the same width I will be cutting.
Measure & set fence as you are doing.
With saw on, touch the wood to the blade to just cut through top & bottom & pull it back.
Flip the wood over & do the same thing.

If you’re in the middle, the kerf cut will identical for both cuts… If different, adjust the fence & try again until centered.
It may take a little fiddling to get it “Just right”...

Hope this helps.

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=1389"

... sorry… please delete this one…

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=1389"

So, its better to be consistent than correct…

-- There are three kinds of people... those who can count, and those who can't

Thanks for the helpful replies. I didn’t do a test run, but I will in the future.

As was said, with so much of this, errors add up; one side +1/64, the other -1/64, totaling 1/32, and so on. I was also using a Woodcraft tenoning jig for part of the project, which I am finding out is a piece of junk. When you tighten the locking nut, the section of the jig holding the board skews slightly toward the blade. I was assuming it was doing so uniformly and was compensating based on that assumption, but in fact it’s just the front edge which steps out, given a cut which is at a slight angle to the face of the board. Because of what I was trying to accomplish, this error was also doubled.

So it was a bad day ;-)

I also agree in this pursuit it’s best to aim more for precision (consistency) then accuracy (correctness).

Thanks again.

Dan

I picked up on something in your post so here goes. you said you set the fence parelel to the miter slot. did you set the blade parelel to the miter slot first? if not then you missed the first step to setting up the saw. the table needs to set first because if the table is not square with the blade ie…. [blade and miter slot parallel] then setting the fence with the miter slot does no good. check this first. once this setting is correct then set the fence. another thing to check is how strait the fence is. I have seen fences [even the good ones] that are not strait. if the fence is like a beismeyer with laminated sides they can be ajusted but it aint easy to do. mater of fact my beis is a tiny bit unstrait but I havent done anything about it yet because its a pain to do and I always rip wide and joint afterwards. if the boards are strait and one is a hair wider than the other but are parallel then its user error. ripping perfectly down the middle is not as easy as one might think. what i generally do is set the fence to almost center and rip once then rip the offcut without changing the fence. then you get two exactly the same. hope this helps.

skeez

-- hey honey! watch this!

I think Charlie has the task in the best perspective. That being said Bob#2 has the best solution, of coarse the tip about watching the fence not the blade applies with any rip cut. If you pay attention to that one tip you will surely improve your ripping problem.

-- Kip Northern Illinois ( If you don't know where your goin any road will take you there) George Harrison

Dan,
Like they say practice makes perfect.
A lot of people have a habit of watching the blade rather than the fence. You just need to make sure you know where your fingers are in relation to the blade.
Good luck, tomorrow will be a better day

-- Ed Collinge- Edmonds, WA.

I am little surprised that no one has mentioned using one of the guide rail systems like EZSmart or Festool. The edge of the guide is your cut line with no deviation. True, you use a circular saw rather than a TS, but I am more interested in the finished product than the staying with the ””traditional” method. After all, tradition would dictate the use of a hand saw only. Please, not trying to be argumentative, just my thinking that the very safe, no experience needed ease of accurate cuts by moving a circular saw rather than moving the wood makes a lot of sense. And you get the cut with very little or no edge chipping.

Just for your thinking.

Bo

-- Making sawdust in South East Texas

Thanks for the replies. I ripped an additional board for this project (a picture frame) using the test method & it came out great.

I agree Ed it’s partly practice. Only tackled a few fairly basic projects so far, I learn a lot from each one.

When I set up the saw, I did make sure the miter slots were parallel to the blade 1st, then to the fence. Only real issue was the front of the table had to be raised nearly 1/8”, as the dial indicator was spot-on with the blade at 90 deg., but off when it was set to 45. Took me awhile to figure that one out ;-) I have a very good FWW article on table saw tuning, a PDF of which I can email anyone who might need it.

I do have one of those rail systems for cutting sheet goods, but a really cheap one from Lowes utilizing c-clamps. Works, but a lot of screwing around. Don’t know about something as fancy as the Festool, but the one I have would be very hard to use on such a narrow board (3”)

Dan

Another thing that can cause an uneven rip cut – if your splitter is not precisely aligned along the same plane as the blade. This can cause the piece against the fence to edge away from the fence and will give you problematic rip cuts. This is experience talking!

Jim