Use Your Fingers As A Saw Guide

When your trying to make a "rip" cut with a circular saw, it's sometimes hard to keep the dang thing straight.

You CAN just use the guide marks on the front of the saw base, but the vibration form the saw and your line of site can make it hard to hold it steady on the line.

They usually provide a guide with each saw that you can manually attach each time you need it. The problem is, very often you're also making crosscut cuts as well as rips in the same project and it's a pain to have to put the guide on and off each time you need it.

So, here's what you do...

Start by getting your cut started and make sure the guide mark on the from of the saw and the blade are making the cut where you want it.

CAREFULLY  grasp the side of the saw base with your thumb and index fingers, close to the front of the base,so they hold the saw firmly and let your other fingers slide along the edge of the piece of wood (or whatever you're cutting). You'll have to arrange your fingers differently for each cut, depending on how far from the edge of the work you're making your cut.

In the image above, my index finger is beside the saw and on top of the piece I'm cutting and my middle finger is sliding along the edge of the piece. If you can imagine..if I were to tip my hand to the left, I could make the rip a little narrower. If I put middle finger on top of the workpiece, beside my index finger, and use my ring finger as the guide, it would make the rip wider.

In this image, I'm at the end of the board and I ran out of material to use as a guide..In these cases, remove your fingers from the saw and just place them ON the work piece like a clamp, and let the saw slide along beside them. If you don't do this, you'll probably end up making your cut crooked on the end.

Since you won't have a free hand to hold the work-piece, you'll want to plan on clamping the piece in place with a clamp.

There are of course, many types of clamps. Your budget and personal tastes will help you decide which one to use.

If you workpiece is narrow, you'll need to start with the clamp at the far end and then move it back to the beginning when you get close to the end of the cut.

Some people will think this is too dangerous or risky, but I've been doing it all my life. Not sure were I learned it, either my father or another carpenter. Anyway - I do it all the time...it works!

What would you have done? Enter your comments below!