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Ran my table saw freehand for 12 years until a guy in Boise asked why I never used a featherboard
I was ripping some 8/4 walnut for a bench and the board kicked back hard enough to leave a bruise on my hip. A guy I met at a shop class in Boise asked why I never ran a featherboard and I honestly did not have an answer. I grew up watching my dad feed stock with his bare hands so I just copied that for over a decade. Now I am wondering if I am the only one who got lazy about this, or if featherboards are one of those things people argue about. Do you run one on every rip cut or only when the board gets narrow?
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paige42726d ago
The part about copying your dad feeding stock with bare hands hits home, I did the same thing for years because that's just how I saw it done growing up. A featherboard is cheap and takes ten seconds to clamp on, and it keeps the stock tight to the fence so the blade can't grab it and throw it back at you. I run one on pretty much every rip now, not just narrow stuff, because kickback on a wide board still hurts like hell and 8/4 walnut is way too expensive to ruin. The only time I skip it is when the board is so wide the featherboard would sit behind the blade, since it has to go before the blade or it does nothing. Mount it so the fingers angle slightly into the cut and don't push it so hard that it stalls the feed. Honestly the bruise is the cheap lesson, a lot of guys learn it with stitches.
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