Table Saw Won't Cut Skin
Developed for kids and crafters, this table saw cuts a wood-substitute made from vegetable oil. Perfect for those who want a wood working experience without the risk of power tool injury.
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Transcript:
Now this is my friend Ishaan, and he goes to the same school as my two children do and he has two really big interests I understand, one is in building things, he helps his dad a lot with all kinds of projects around the house and he likes television. So I've invited him over here to build something. We're going to do it together and we're going to be using a brand new table saw that’s safe for kids and a new material. So, you ready to start.
Ok.
Ishaan and I have decided to build a box complete with hinged lid, metal corners and a hasp.
Now Ishaan, this is the wood that we're going to be using today, but you know what, it's not really wood.
Yeah, it looks cool.
That does look cool and it feels kind of like wood, but it's actually something called polyurethane. You know what this is made from?
From what?
Soybeans.
Soybeans
Yeah, very cool huh.
Cool.
And the reason we're using this instead of wood is that the saw that you're going to be using will cut this pretty easily, but it won't cut wood and that's one of the reasons that it's safe.
Yeah.
All right. I've made up some templates. OK, there's one for the top of the box, there's one for the bottom of the box., there's one for the sides, there's one for the front and there's one for the back. OK, so what I'm trying to do is you're going to take these templates, you're going to put them on the material and you're going to trace the outline first of all and then we're going to go over here to the saw and we're going to cut all those out.
Projects designed for older children may require reading measurements and transferring those measurements to the saw.
However, since we already have a template, I'm going to use this to set up the saw. I'm going to lay the template right up against the blade like that and then I'm going to bring the fence in like this.
When set, we want the template to slide snugly between the fence and the blade.
Whenever we use a power tool like this, we want to protect our nose. We don't want to breathe in any dust and we want to protect our eyes.
Ok, the blade on this table saw I've invented is oscillating instead of rotating. Consequently, I can touch the running blade without injuring my skin. Even though this saw won't cut skin, it's important to teach children to respect the tool as if it were the real thing,
Safety and proper operating procedures learned here are important and will transfer to the use of traditional power tools when the child gets older.
Congratulations.
This is the piece you cut out, put it on top. Perfect!
OK
Good work.
Excellent.
Now to make these cuts right here.
Yes.
We're going to use this.
This is called a miter gauge, you know about this.
Yes, yeah I think I have
Really, Wow. Now here's what we're going to do with this. We're going to lay this in here like that, ok. So this is called a stop block and what it's going to do, it's going to tell us exactly where to position that piece that we're going to cut off. So drop this in here at the very end of your template and this is a clamp. So we're going to drop this clamp on like this. Any time you want to cut several pieces to the same length, you do this. OK, so we got the top, bottom, back, front and two sides. Nice line, yeah.
Almost any glue can be used with this soy based polyurethane. Today, we're using a quick setting cyanoacrylate or super glue, as it's sometimes called, readily available in almost any hobby store.
Ok, go ahead and put the side on. This is called a vise grip or a locking plier, ok?
We're going to use standard sixpenny finished nails as pins to hold the parts together until the glue dries.
And just shove it in.
Like that?
Push it in as far as you can go, as far as you can go, keep going, keep going, good. OK, now to unlock this, you push that lever down. Good. Now we're going to take the hammer and hammer it the rest of the way in. Terrific. Just a little bit.
The great thing about this non-toxic vegetable oil based polyurethane is that it's biodegradable, can be attached with wood glue, epoxy, polyurethane or hot melted adhesive as well as screws and nails.
Next, we use a nail set to counter sink the heads below the surface. Good.
We're going to have to block those holes too, right?
We repeat the nailing and glueing process for the remaining sides of the box.
It feels so cool.
A nice feature of the non-toxic soy based polyurethane material is that it allows children to learn good nailing technique quickly and experience real progress, eliminating the frustration that children often feel when trying to drive nails into wood.
Ordinary wall spackle is used to fill the nail holes, once the spackle has dried it's time for a little sanding.