Saw Tools
Sawing wood is one of the primary activities of carpentry, woodworking, and manufacture of everything from rough wooden shipping pallets to fine furniture and sporting goods items such as oars. Saws and saw tools come in a vast variety to meet the many needs for sawing.
The right saw tool for the job at hand makes all the difference between an easy, clean cut and a struggle that ends with a jagged edge which needs lots of sanding. Using the right saw tools is an important safety consideration, too. If you have to struggle to cut, you may well slip and cut yourself.
Circular saw tools are hand-held electrically powered saws with circular blades. The blade spins at high speed to cut very quickly through rough lumber. But circular saws cannot cut very thick wood easily, because the radius of the circular blade is only 4-5 inches.
Table saws are a staple of most serious woodworkers. A table saw is essentially a circular saw mounted vertically in the middle of a metal table; wood is pushed through the saw blade to cut it, while the blade spins from a stationary position. A variety of table saw tools help to make straight cuts of various angles, widths, and depths.
Miter sawtools are designed to cut at very precise angles to one of the wood's faces. A simple miter box has pairs of slots into which a hand saw fits; the slots hold the saw blade at 90 or 45 degrees from the edge of the box. Adjustable miter sawtools allow cuts to be made at any angle.
A jig saw tool is an electrically powered, hand-held, reciprocating (up and down motion) blade saw. The blade is only 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide so it can make fairly tight turns in wood, enabling intricate curved cuts. Some people mount a jig saw upside down with the blade sticking up through a hole cut in a wooden table, making a hybrid jig-table saw.
A band saw has two rubber-tired pulleys mounted vertically in line with each other. On the pulleys rides an endless band of steel, along one edge of which are cut saw teeth. Wood is pushed on a table against the moving band saw. Band saws range from 1/16 inch wide up to as much as a foot for sawing large raw logs into various sizes of lumber.
Makers of saw tools include Stihl Tools, Makita saws, Ingersoll Tools, Mitsubishi Tools, Craftsman Tools sold through Sears, and many other fine tool makers.