The jigsaw is one of the most versatile tools for our woodworking and DIY projects, and this is aided by the wide variety of affordable blades that are easy to attach and remove from the jigsaw. But sometimes we would like it to make cleaner cuts in wood.
So let’s take a look at a simple woodworking trick to make cleaner cuts in wood with the jigsaw. It is not a panacea, but it can help.
If we look at the base of any jigsaw we can buy and how the blades are installed, we see that the base is very open, especially around the blade area, and that the teeth cut on the upward stroke. This is why the jigsaw cutting blades make a clean cut on the underside of the wookpiece, but on the top the workpiece is unsupported and the teeth push splinters up during the cut.
This woodworking and do-it-yourself tip is very simple, and consists of simply putting a wooden base under the metallic base of the jigsaw. In that wooden base I previously cut a slot using the same cutting blade.
So now I’m going to cut the wood directly as I would normally do with the jigsaw. This wooden “insert” that I put under the metallic jigsaw shoe holds the wood while the teeth of the cutting blade come upwards, reducing splintering.
I am not going to say that I get an spectacular result, but I think that in view of the two cuts the difference is quite clear, and although the splintering of the wood is not totally avoided, it is significantly reduced. In view of the picture, I don’t even have to say on which one I used this woodworking trick to cut wood with the jigsaw and on which one I didn’t use the trick.
But this tip for clean cutting with the jigsaw is just a temporary thing that I wanted to test whether it works or not. So I used double-sided tape to attach the wood sheet to the metal base. But that double-sided tape joint doesn’t hold up to a lot of cutting.
In future posts, or in videos that you can already find in my woodworking and DIY channel, you can see improvements that I have already made to this woodworking tip, also making a system to guide and keep the blade vertical and thus avoid the bending and so achieve a perfect vertical cut.
