Making wood strips with a saw station for a catamaran build

In this episode I continue with producing strips that I will need for the build.

[@Chinchilla27150]

I am a novice at woodworking, but I recently made a less serious attempt at creating a jig for cutting strips with a circular saw. I fixed my saw in place and pushed the boards through (like an inverted table saw). On the plus side, I was able to add poor man's dust collection by putting a small cardboard box with a vacuum hose over the saw. I think this captured well over 90% of the dust. Wouldn't be too hard to add a plywood box with vacuum hose around your homebrewed track saw, I'd think. The saw did some unpredictable and dangerous things, though, the worst of which was kicking the board back toward me (if I remember correctly). I used a jig similar to what I've seen people use with table saws to push the board through, but I think this put too much horizontal force onto the blade, squeezing it and maybe even deforming it. I think it would be better in your case to fix the board in place using clamps. Why not add a few holes to the base of the track you're sliding the board through so you can clamp in 3-4 places along the cut length? Reposition the board once or twice, and you'd be done without the need for potentially dangerous manual board movement, right?

[@sailoutofagarage6212]

Thank you for commenting! The circular saw is made for hand holding so I think that is the way to go. Pushing the wood onto the saw like you do on a table saw might be dangerous as you noticed. I definitely agree that clamping the wood to the board will make it much more reliable. However, it will also take some time and when you are cutting 100 strips it is a lot extra time. When cutting from big pieces of wood there is no danger of sudden movements, the weight of the timber balances the power of the saw. I think it is only necessary to clamp the wood when you are getting down to about 3 strip thickness of the timber you are cutting from. I'm planning improvements in my strip production so keep watching.

[@Chinchilla27150]

@@sailoutofagarage6212 Great! I will wait until you have perfected it and will then do my best to copy it shamelessly! I don't want to buy/use a table saw because I feel they are just too dangerous for novice woodworkers like me. Honestly, it would probably be more practical to have a local mill or cabinet maker rip my strips for me. I did manage to get a few usable strips even from my comically bad setup, but it was more like 70% unusable strips in my case.

[@jeffreywelch3268]

How do you rate the hobie cat you built some time ago why would you need another, has it go any problems❤

[@sailoutofagarage6212]

The Hobie is fine but my taste has improved. I want something that is easier to transport on the roof rack, has more internal packing space and the most important reason a design of my own.