[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] So on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're gonna look at keeping your tools in top shape.

We're gonna cover everything from sharpening your hand tools to making sure that your table saw is set up for safe, accurate cuts and how easy it is to transform a band saw into a precision cutting tool.

You'll want to stick around for this episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, I think for all of us, any shop time is precious time.

So we really want to get into the shop and start building some things.

And the last thing we want to think about is the condition of our tools.

But, you know, tool maintenance matters.

Well-maintained tools will give you better quality work, will enhance your time in the shop, and there's the matter of personal safety.

So tool maintenance -- it's important.

It is.

You know, one tool every couple weeks, or maybe once a month, you go through your entire shop, just to make sure they're in top operating condition.

Mm-hmm.

A little bit at a time, and it won't be a burden.

Now, I'm gonna be taking on the table saw.

I'll talk a little bit about basic maintenance and also about setting your fence and blade for accuracy.

We don't want to take anything for granted with accuracy.

So I'm gonna show you how to get your chisels and your plane irons sharp and keep them sharp.

I'm gonna take a look at one of our most essential tools, at least in our shops, is the band saw.

Now, it can be a little bit of an afterthought.

It's just a rough cutting tool.

But by following some simple steps, you can turn it into a fine-cutting, accurate tool as well.

We're gonna collect all of this information and put in some more stuff about some of the other power tools and hand tools in your shop.

You'll find all of this at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So table saw first?

Let's go.

The heart of a power-tool workshop -- it's the table saw.

But a table saw and needs some care once in a while.

Now, a good place to start with caring for your table saw is to clean out the sawdust in the base.

You know, table saws are notoriously difficult to get good dust collection on, so the sawdust tends to build up quite a bit, and we need to get it out of there for a couple of reasons.

One is that it's going to impair the ability of your dust-collection system to get the dust that it can.

Two -- eventually all that sawdust will create an environment which will start to gum up the workings of the mechanism of your saw.

And third -- it's a fire hazard.

Now, I've witnessed about three table-saw fires, and the last one happened when I was operating the saw.

So the point is, you can start a fire in your table saw.

And that's another good reason to keep the base of your saw clean.

So let's go ahead and get started and clean the sawdust out of the saw.

Well, lots of sawdust in this table saw.

There's no good way to get it out.

It's awkward, it's messy, but it's got to go.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, since we're already on our hands and knees, it's a good time to take care of the worm and worm gear, the mechanisms that raise the blade up and down and tilt it to a bevel.

Now, what I like to do is take a nylon bristle brush or a brass bristle brush and get in there and clean all the sawdust off the worm and the worm gear.

I'll then apply a light amount of a dry lubricant.

You may also want to take a little bit of aerosol oil and lubricate the steel shaft that connects the hand wheels to the mechanism.

Just make sure you use a product which has lasting lubricating properties rather than a product which simply is meant to break apart rusty metal.

Now, many table saws that are used in garage or basement shops will show a few spots of glue, maybe a few spots of varnish, and a light glazing of some rust.

So I think a good way to start is to use a Scotch-Brite pad and carefully go over the entire top of the saw to make sure that it's smooth and free of any debris.

Also, make sure that you get in the miter slots.

These need to be clean and smooth.

With the top clean, it's time to think about putting some kind of protective coating on it.

There are a lot of great products out there.

What I always turn to, though, is just paste wax.

Why?

Because I have it, it provides a little bit of protection from rust, and it provides a very nice lubricated surface that the wood slides right across when I'm using my table saw.

Cover the top thoroughly with the wax, and make sure you get it down in the miter slots as well.

Now, while it doesn't need the protection, it doesn't hurt to put a thin coat of wax on the balance of your outfeed table as well.

That way, when you're cutting big sheets of plywood, they'll move right along.

Now all I have to do is give the wax a few minutes to dry, and I'll buff it out with a clean cloth.

There are three last steps we need to take in our table-saw care, and they are about ensuring the accuracy of your saw.

In place of a saw blade, I've put in here a calibrating disk, and so it's a true well-machine disk, 10 inches in diameter, that's gonna replace the blade, and it gives us a reference that we can trust to set up some different things.

The first thing we want to do is make sure that the blade is 90 degrees to the surface of the table saw.

Now, all table saws, of course, tilt back and forth, and there will be a bolt underneath in the mechanism of your saw which you can adjust.

The way to check the blade to make sure it is a true 90 degrees is not to reference off the throat insert plate, but to reference off the cast-iron top of your table saw.

To do that, I'm actually going to use a framing square, and for convenience, I've clamped it to a block of wood.

So as you can see, I'm referencing off the top itself, and with the framing square clamped to the block, it's very easy for me to make fine adjustments and get that blade exactly 90.

So now I'm gonna go underneath the table saw, and I'll work with that bolt to make sure that I'm always coming back to that exact same spot.

Once I have the table-saw blade set where it always comes back to 90 degrees, my next task is going to be to make sure this blade is exactly parallel to the miter gauge slots.

The easiest way to do this is to take a straight edge that you trust, place it against our calibration plate.

Now take your miter square.

Place it in the miter slot, and then extend the blade out till it just touches... our rule.

Now what I'll do is slide my miter gauge back and forth, and I can very quickly see if there's a gap that opens up between the two.

If there is, this blade is slightly out of line from the miter slots.

The way we fix that is that most table saws will have four bolts underneath which hold the mechanism to the top.

We need to loosen those bolts and, using a dead-blow hammer, a short piece of 2x4, whatever you can use, we need to be able to tweak that mechanism just a little bit until we get our calibration plate exactly parallel to the miter slot.

Our last chore is to make sure that the fence is exactly parallel to the miter slots.

Now, all fences are a little bit different, but for the most part, what you'll find is two set screws on the T-head of the fence.

An Allen wrench will allow you to adjust them in and out, and it's very easy to adjust the fence and get it right on.

And with that done, you finished a basic table-saw tune-up.

So when I started woodworking, I started off sharpening all my chisels and my plane irons with what's called the scary sharp method.

And that's basically using a piece of wet/dry sandpaper on a flat reference surface.

In my case, I used a piece of marble, but a lot of people use a piece of glass.

And I like this method for a couple reasons.

First of all, it's pretty cheap to get into.

You just have to buy a couple sheets of wet/dry sandpaper and find a good reference surface, and you can go to town sharpening.

The next stop in my sharpening journey was one of these.

And this is a set of water stones.

What I like about water stones is they cut fast.

That means that you're not spending a ton of time sharpening, and you can move through each individual stone's grit pretty quickly.

Now, because they do cut fast, they're fairly soft, and they can wear away.

So that means that there's little bit of maintenance to them.

You have to keep them flat, and every couple uses, you have to flatten them to make sure that you keep a true flat reference face.

In addition, they do have to be soaked in water, which usually in our home shop isn't that big a deal.

We just keep a tub like this with a couple stones in it, and you're good to go whenever you need to sharpen.

However, I didn't like that feature because oftentimes I'm bringing my sharpening stuff here to the shop or to a place I'm teaching, and it just seemed to be a little cumbersome, and it can be messy.

But I did graduate from those.

What I've ended up with now is these.

And these are a set of natural Arkansas oil stones.

So these are actually three stones that are naturally produced and they're quarried, and they're three different grits, and there's a few different grits you can get, but the ones I settled on are labeled a soft Arkansas stone, which is kind of a medium-to-coarse grit.

There is a hard Arkansas stone, which is kind of a fine grit.

And then there is the hard black, which is a ultrafine grit.

And there's also a hard white translucent, which is even finer still.

And the grit comparisons to these versus, say, sandpaper or water stones is a little skewed because these are measured on the micron level.

But I would say we're probably at about 1,000 grit, 6,000 grit, maybe 10,000 grit here.

What do I like about these?

Well, really, that's my entire sharpening set.

So I have three sets of stones.

I have an oil can with a honing oil in there, which I just use a mixture of baby oil and a little bit of mineral oil to thicken it up a little bit.

And that's all I need.

I do add in a leather strap with some buffing compound on it, or buffing rouge.

But before I ever touch one of my sharpening stones, I'd like to start off by grabbing the tool that needs sharpened at least for the first time, and bringing in a bench grinder.

So the reason I like to start off with a grinder is to establish a hollow-ground bevel on the plane iron or the chisel that I'm sharpening.

That way, when I get to my actual sharpening stones, I'm only sharpening just a little bit of metal.

I'm not worrying about the rest of the bevel.

The hollow ground makes the sharpening process a whole lot faster.

So starting off with the grinder isn't something you have to do every time, but it's something I like to start off with just to establish a good hollow on there before I do start using it.

So let's talk about this grinder I brought in.

Now, obviously, this doesn't look like a normal bench grinder, and it's not.

This is a slow-speed wet grinder.

So on this side, we have a wheel that is riding in a water trough.

And this is basically like the old-style big sharpening stones that you would sit it and spin the wheel with your feet as you're sharpening your tool.

This is just much smaller scale.

We also have a tool rest on here, and then we have another wheel on the opposite side.

And this is a leather-strap wheel.

The grinder also has the ability to spin forward towards me.

And it has the ability to turn around and spin backwards... ...away from me.

When I'm establishing my primary bevel, however, I like to usually have it spinning towards me.

It seems to cut a little bit better, and it's just a little bit faster process.

Now, in addition to the tool holder, a lot of these manufacturers have many different attachments that can go on here to help you hold your tool at the correct angle as you're sharpening.

This one in particular is for a flat blade, and it just slides in there, and it references up against one side, and you have a couple of knobs to hold your tool down.

So the first thing I like to do when I'm grinding my bevel is to use a black marker and color in the entire surface of that bevel.

Okay.

So the reason I color in my bevel, especially when I'm doing this first initial grind, is once I start removing metal, it's very easy to see where I'm at and to judge my progress.

Once all that black marker is removed from the bevel, I know that I have a complete hollow grind, and I'm ready to go to my stones.

So let's get this installed in here.

And I like to just judge by eye where that bevel is sitting, and then I can adjust my tool rest as needed.

And the goal here is to have that bevel making as much contact with the stone as I can.

That's pretty good.

Then we'll tighten it down.

So one thing to note here -- because this is a slow-speed grinder and the stone is running in a bath of water, I don't have to have safety glasses on for this.

But if you are using a high-speed grinder or if you're more comfortable with safety glasses on, feel free to use them.

Use whatever safety equipment you feel like you need to.

So now that we are locked in here, we're just gonna turn this on and start to grind it away.

♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, there we go.

So now all the black marker is gone.

That tells me I have a complete hollow grind on that bevel.

Now, a couple things to note when you're using wet/dry grinder like this.

The first thing is you're gonna want to keep the bevel moving on the width of the stone.

You can see as I'm making my cuts, I'm sliding back and forth.

That's making sure that you don't wear one area of the stone more than the other.

The other thing is, I always like to have extra water close because once you fill this trough up with water and it starts picking water and the stones start soaking it in, that water can dissipate really quickly.

So I like to have some available just in case I need to splash some more in.

But now that we have that ground, we can go ahead and move over the stones and take a look at those.

But first, we're gonna touch up the back.

So now that we have the bevel established, let's go ahead and flatten the back.

With oil stones, just need a couple of lines of oil.

And flattening the back is as easy as just applying pressure and making circles, figure eights, and strokes until... ...we have a consistent scratch pattern.

And that's pretty good for that one, so then we'll step up a grit.

♪♪ Okay.

Then we'll go to the fine stone.

♪♪ Okay, all we're looking at here is for that last 1/8 inch or so behind the edge of the blade to be flat and shiny.

So with the back taken care of, now we can tackle the bevel.

And my preferred method here is just to free-hand it.

With that hollow grind, you can set the chisel down, rock it until you feel it contacting on the heel and the edge of the blade.

And then I just lift it just a hair and make strokes.

And about 15 strokes.

You can see where the edge is getting polished off that stone, and you can feel on the backside we're pushing a burr off.

I can feel it.

It's just like a little wire.

And that's what we're looking for.

Then I'll make a stroke on the back and knock it off.

Then we'll go to the next grit.

And then we'll go to our last stone.

All right, and because this is a fine stone, that burr is really, really fine, but it's still there.

So now, as a final sharpening, I'll take this to just a leather strap.

I'll hit the back a couple of times, then I'll do the same thing on the face.

And a strap like this is great for edge maintenance during a project, too.

There we go.

Now that's gonna be the sharpest chisel back in our rack back there.

But overall, if you follow these easy sharpening steps, you'll have sharp tools in your shop, and they'll be safer and cleaner.

Now, this particular segment takes me back a little bit 'cause one of my very first appearances on "The Woodsmith Shop" was talking about tuning up and using your band saw.

That was 14 years ago.

I've learned quite a bit since then.

And in my own shop, the band saw is my only stationary saw, so I use it for everything from making rip cuts and resawing to cutting joinery and making smooth curves.

So I depend on it to work right as soon as I walk up to it.

So when we talk about this, let's talk about it in terms of things that you can check whenever you're changing a blade.

Now, it's a pretty simple process, and it's frankly gonna take longer to explain than it is to actually do it.

But follow along with me here.

We'll start by opening up the saw.

And you can see there's a thin metal blade that's flexible that runs around two wheels -- an upper wheel and then a lower wheel on the saw.

Now, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you're always working with a sharp blade.

Now, it's not a time to be frugal here and try to get the most use out of a blade.

The duller a blade gets, the more it's gonna wander off track and lead to a lot of frustration and inaccurate cuts.

When you put a blade on, you're gonna set it on the wheels, both the top and the bottom.

And you want to adjust its tracking.

And by that, I mean that the blade should be centered on the top wheel.

What that does is make sure that the teeth are pointing straight at you.

You'll adjust the tracking on the wheel, and by the tracking, you'll adjust the angle in very subtle amounts of this top wheel.

There's a knob and a stop on the backside that you'll make adjustments to.

And then just rotate the wheel by hand when there's light tension applied to the blade.

Once you see that that blade is running right in the middle, then you can set the stop on the tracking, and then you'll tension the blade with this knob up here.

Now, the amount of tension that you apply to a blade depends on the width of it.

Most saws will have some kind of a gauge or a chart on the inside.

That's gonna get you in the ballpark.

You don't want to apply too little tension because the blade can get pushed off the wheel, or it will create a little slack in the cut, and then you'll get, like, a barrel shape of the cut.

I usually try to make sure that the blade feels like it's tight and resists moving side to side when you push on the side of the blade.

Now, here in The Woodsmith Shop, we end up moving around our saw quite a bit.

It's on a mobile base, and we can just bring it in right where we need it.

The problem is that when we move it, we're often gonna pull on the table at the top.

What can happen with that is that the table can then get shifted out of square.

And it can be pretty subtle so that we don't know that it's happened until it's too late and the cut is spoiled.

So just to be sure, every time you check and replace your blade, grab a square and see if the table is square to the blade.

Once it is, you can lock it in place.

Now, most band saws have an adjustable bolt to act as a stop and a pad below the table.

That way, if the table shifts out of position, you can quickly get it back into place and know that it's right at 90 degrees.

Once you have your table squared, the next thing to do is to make sure that the blade is fully supported.

Like I said, it's a flexible steel band.

And when you're making cuts, the blade will twist and want to follow those curves.

So what you want to do is adjust the guide assemblies.

There's one up on top and then one below the table.

Now, each guide assembly is gonna vary a little bit depending on the make and model of your saw.

On this one, the guide assemblies consist of a set of roller bearings on either side and then a roller thrust bearing behind the blade.

What I'm looking for on both the upper guide assembly and the lower one is to bring it so that the guide bearings are just next to the blade, not quite touching.

So I'll move it over until I see the blades shift, back off just a little, and then lock it down.

You can really get caught up in trying to get specific distances, but it's not that big a deal.

What I'm looking for is just a small amount of light in between the bearing and the blade itself.

And you'll do the same thing for the thrust bearing behind the blade.

What you're looking for is to provide just enough support that as you push a workpiece into the blade, you're not gonna push the blade off the wheels of the saw.

Once you've taken care of the upper guide assembly, you want to do the same thing down below.

Sometimes that can be a little harder to get to and easily forgotten, but make sure you remember it.

Finally, just as Chris talked about with using the saw, you want to use the dust collection and then periodically clean out and vacuum out the dust inside the case.

By following a simple preflight test, every time you change the blade on your saw, you can be sure that whenever you go to use it, you're gonna get those safe, accurate cuts that you're looking for.

So the next time you're out in your workshop, pick one of your tools, whether it's a hand tool or one of your power tools, and give it a little bit of a tune-up.

And I'm sure you gonna notice a big difference right away.

Remember, we'll have a lot of information on keeping your tools up and running at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also the home for other woodworking videos, information, and great project plans -- enough to keep you busy until we meet right back here in The Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪