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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