Perfect Cuts With a Circular Saw

[dougpine]

Luke you forgot the most important thing of all. Cover your coffee/tea cup when cutting wood.

[tinkmarshino]

Luke take it from me I have been a carpenter since 1972.. if you hold your saw tight with a locked wrist and a straight forearm and a bit of concentration you can cut a straight line with out having to do all of that extra work.. It takes just a bit of practice but once you have it you will never need a straight edge.. Carry on son.. you are at the beginning of a great and exciting trip we call life..

[mikebond]

This same trick also works with an angle grinder and, my favorite, a handheld plasma torch.

[toddratson]

I find a piece of extruded aluminum L stock works better and is easier to align with pencil marks but your tip is totally valid and will produce much better results than trying to follow a line. Good job Luke!

[andybaker]

Great video as usual my friend. Particularly pleased with the mention of ear protection. I'm pushing 60 now and when I started work at 16, in factories, I was fortunate enough to work with guys approaching 60 (some a couple of decades younger) who were partially deaf through exposure to noise in the work environment. I've always used ear protection ever since. Who says you can't learn from other people's mistakes. Please show the viewers your ear plugs and help preserve somebody else's hearing.

[wibblywobblyidiotvision]

Nice. Your video style is getting better, keep it up. A few comments, though.

Firstly, you want your guide, if at all possible, on the piece you want to keep, not on the waste. That ay, if you "wander", you're cutting into the waste and not the work.

Secondly, and safety-wise, you want the saw on a piece of work that is supported. If you're on an unsupported piece of wood, the still-spinning saw will tend to swing down towards your right leg when the cut is finished. In reality, you probably want to have both sides of the work supported, it saves rip out at the end of the cut and various types of danger including the aforementioned leg-swing. If you have wooden trestles, and you adjust your depth of cut properly beforehand, you can use a pair of trestles and cut slightly into the top of the trestles, which are sacrificial anyway.

As has been said, once you have a bit of experience, you don't really need guides. But in reality, most job site carpenters are using track saws, basically it's a guide that clips onto the saw and saves all the buggering about.

[Nuts-Bolts]

I counted ten attached fingers at the start of the video and ten attached fingers by the end. Luke is winning.

[edwardhughes]

Your getting better Luke at presenting. you didnt say awesome once and you were a bit calmer. Well done.

[paulparkinson]

Luke your videos are getting great, keep it up.

[rastamanralph]

Here's another tip for you. When you want the cut to be perfect size, make sure you make the blade travel along the side which you don't need because the thickness of the blade is a couple of mills and it will be short by a mill or so if you don't. So instead of going from the guide go by the outside of the blade. I hope this helps you👌💛😉

[lezpitt]

Remember to allow for blade thickness depending on which piece of wood you want

[lubbock]

Luke, your video making skills have improved by many factors as well :)

[mwm]

Good tip! Next video - How to cut a perfect circle with a circular saw?

[noscreadur]

Nice vid Luke. I've been learning some router tricks just like this; it's all about the prep and the jig. Good stuff.

[jasonwitt]

I wouldn't use a piece of wood as the rail, the wood could have small waves that can cause a cut to be way off depending on how well you want something built. Use a long aluminum t track or aluminum guide. Either that or use a long piece of steel as the guide. I clamp my guide to each end of the workpiece.

[nikpaa]

Normally in framing if you have to be precise you just lay a 2x4 on your line, step on it, and rip it, this works too tho

[barbufodor]

good one Luke. Just a tease: "let me get some protection on, for my ears and my eyes" you might want to include some protection for your toes too.:)

[herbetone]

Handy tip Luke, 2.6 centimeters smells a lot like our old imperial 1 inch, which is just one whiff smaller😉 Happy new year to you young man.

[dantronics]

Ideal time to demo that vacuum as well since you were creating a bit of dust

[ThomasAndersonbsf]

oh something to add to it is showing how to cover the saw guard on the bottom with masking tape so it does not scratch something that needs to be handled with care wil still being able to cut it, all with out having to mask off the whole board :) (yeah I have some cabinet grade plywood that scratching it up is out of the question but I have also used my saws for cutting plastics for various projects like a see through generator/motor testing kit that can be altered any way desired to test out different coil and magnet position patterns and such ;) so it made it easy and nice to cover the guard up with blue painters masking tape, (for longer lasting and smoother action a good quality duct tape is good too since it is basically polyethylene one of the softer plastics to avoid damaging anything you are sliding over and get a good slick reaction almost like you oiled things to slide over it while cutting even though the polyethylene is not wet at all :)