Two 10 " blades at once 1/2 in apart.

[else24]

When I volunteered for the sawmill at the local thresheree a couple years ago they had a two-bladed saw with one of the blades adjustable side-to-side, that they used to saw slabs into boards with one pass. Nifty little thing. Scary as hell, but it had its own power feed. Anyway...

I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with the table saw if you set your blade height just a little higher than the board, and made a sacrificial wooden pushpad with a nice high handle and grabby rubber for a bottom, like an old mousepad or something like that. Or someone else's mousepad. That would accomplish the same thing as a power feed, safely.

You could put it on top of the board and just push it all the way through the cut and all it would do is run some grooves into your sacrificial push pad thingee.

I'd wonder if there was a way I could put splitters behind each blade but I don't know if that would be mandatory of the pushpad was firmly holding the wood as it went through the blades.

[Joe Gorman]

You could use this jig

put 2 splitters in a zero clearance insert. Just be sure they are parallel, or make the splitter farthest from the fence a single point, like a small dowel. I'd add fingers on the back of the push block set to push both pieces and the waste when the push block was against the fence. Joe

[Swingman]

While you can safely get away with this setup for non-through cuts ... i.e. doing both sides of a tenon at once with a table saw tenoning jig ... you are going for a rip, (a through cut) with four parts/pieces that need to be continuously controlled, one in the front, and three on the back side of the blade.

Despite the well meaning "maybe if you did this" advice, this is really nothing to play around with on a stock table saw in a home shop.

Either make safety your first concern, which it should always be (and attempting this operation with "pushsticks" alone is NOT doing that), or buy a tool made for the job.

You may get away with it on a few rips, but with nothing else in your favor it has the real potential to eventually bite, big time.

[Lew Hodgett]

Precisely why I made the 20 ft pole comment.

It is not a matter of "If", it's a matter of "When", it is going to bite you.

Lew

[Swingman]

And with the metal pushstick mentioned, make that a 120' pole! AAMOF, I want to be around the corner, in the next town over, from anyone using a metal pushstick on a table saw.

[Elrond Hubbard]

"Steve" wrote in news:1168584248.945835.118510@

38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

How long are the boards you're ripping? I routinely rip long boards halfway, flip them end for end, and then finish the rip the other way. Kick back is minimized, and control maximized since only half of the board is past the blade and you don't need to release the board at any time. The same technique might be used for your arrangement, although extracting the piece between the blades without blade marks might be a challenge.

Scott Cramer

[Andy Dingley]

Or a power feeder, or indeed a pushblock.

The only one I would use is a power feeder. Simply because it's the only one that feeds the stock past it, rather than attaching to the stock and passing along past the saw. This is particularly beneficial when it avoids the problems of getting your push stick / block / cat past a closely-fitting crown guard over the blade.

I'm not a fan of pushblocks. Compared to a push stick they have the disadvantage of a shorter reach over a sawblade. The temptation is thus to lower the blade when ripping thinner stock with a pushblock to gain clearance and IMHO this is worse than any advantage gained from the block. Kickback happens when a horizontal force is generated by the sawblade and transmitted to the workpiece. One of the best ways to avoid that is by using the section of blade where the teeth are travelling vertically, not the uppermost chord where they're moving horizontally.

I certainly use a shallow pushblock for rebating and certainly for short pieces that get less control from the fence. I don't use them for through rips though.

Personally I wouldn't do this idea at all. At most it doubles saw throughput rather than tripling it (you can only make three at once if the stock's already sawn to width). I can also saw another rip in thin softwood nearly as quickly as I can stack the pieces coming off. It's certainly quicker than single rips, but unless I was doing a huge production run it's not enough to notice. If I were doing this on that scale, then I'd have power feeders and assistants.

[Vic Baron]

Boy! I am glad you said that. Considering that they sell aluminum magnetic push sticks, I always thought I was just weird about being wary of using anything metal near the spinning blade. Someone gave me one and I use it to hold notes on he bulletin board. I understand that generally the push stick is not supposed to contact the blade BUT in case it does, you now have a metal projectile hurtling at you rather than a wooden one.

No thank you!

Vic

[Leon]

WHY do you stop in the middle of a cut and star over???

[B A R R Y]

You guys need a Festivus pole!

[Andy Dingley]

I was sawing thin strips one day. I forget why, but these were _really_ thin strips, in light pine. No more than 1/2" by 1/8"-maybe 1/4"

I knew they were going to kick back. Couldn't think how to avoid it, so I decided to live with it. Just made sure I was well out of the firing line instead.

A few feet behind my saw (in my impossibly cluttered workshop) is a set of steel shelves, on which was sitting a plastic toolbox. When one of these strips decided it was time to take up the olympic javelin event, it went straight for the toolbox -- and punched a hole clean through the side. This wasn't some huge flying plank, it was a strip like a long pencil and probably lighter, yet it had that much energy in it.

Concentrates the mind wonderfully, a lesson like that.

[marks542004]

What you are making is a gang saw.

I think the extra safety setup required would defeat the benefits of the extra cut.

You can make a holddown easily enough , and pull the work through from the back is almost essential to avoid the middle stip getting thrown.

I built a jig to help rip 2 x 1 and 3 x 1 furring strips into 1/2" strips , it was just a matter of pushing the wood through the jig and pulling it out the back .

[Elrond Hubbard]

"Leon" wrote in news:s8Vph.33470$ [e-mail]:

Because sometimes I don't have room to do the rip in one pass, and other times it's safer than pushing the skinny rip through the blade with a push stick. Or a hot dog.

[Prometheus]

Agreed 100%- no reason why a stick has to be used. If I had a reason to do something like this, I'd put a rabbet in the edge of a hunk of

2x4 that was as deep as the thickness of the wood and put a good handle on it. If it still seemed a little squirrely, I'd toss a featherboard on saw as well.

[Doug Miller]

I dunno, Vic. ISTM that at that speed (approx 110mph) it doesn't make that much difference whether it's aluminum or wood being hurled at you; it's going to do damage and cause pain, regardless. Either way, it's not a Good Thing.

[D Smith]

Oh, no. Here we go with the airing of grievances....