An inexpensive tool, a mid-priced one, and a high-dollar cordless saw combine into a nice little system for clean and accurate mitering
Welcome back to the job site. I'm going to share with you in this video just some of the efficiency set up that I have for the miter saw, stuff that helps me work more efficiently on the job site. And recently, I've been able to acquire a nicer setup.
I went ahead and got the Flexvolt sliding compound miter saw from DEWALT.
Custom Fabricating Solutions was nice enough to send me the zero clearance inserts for the fence, and the EZ Speedy Fence that you can see with the strut stops.
So, I'll share with you a few things that help me at the miter saw become way more efficient, and help me not to fumble around with things.
Zero-clearance fence eliminates the pencil
We'll start with the zero clearance fence, and the zero clearance fence, I have that right next to my blade, hence the name zero clearance.
I can hook my tape measure onto this zero-clearance fence and then adjust a strut stop which I have on the EZ Speedy Fence. And I can adjust that to, let's say, 25 inches. So I'll loosen it, and then I can move this freely. And then I'll put it at 25 inches, and then I'll tighten that up, and then I can micro adjust that too.
This eliminates the pencil. So it's a pretty impressive idea. So I'm going to put that against the strut stop and make this cut.
And we'll check it out, see how I did. And I'm right on 25 inches. So it's a nice feature to add to your miter saw, and especially how we're doing today, we're going to make repeatable cuts. We can slide this over and then make our next cut, slide this over, and keep the assembly line rolling. It works well for wainscoting and stuff like that.
Now DEWALT has one, one of the material stops on this stand; this is their heavy duty miter saw stand from DEWALT. But to be honest with you, it's not that good, and it's not that reliable. It has a lot of movement in it. The EZ Speedy Fence is stout and rigid, so it's not going to go anywhere. So that's one of the things that I've recently updated to help me with job site efficiency.
Foot-activated dedicated-vacuum (2:50)
The next thing you might have noticed, whenever I made that cut, you may have heard that vacuum turn on. And what that is, is I recently got a momentary foot pedal, so it'll activate any tool that I plug into it momentarily.
So you could use this for any tool. I don't recommend it for heavy duty tools because you might accidentally step on it and may not be the best scenario for that before a vacuum. This thing is amazing. I'll show you how it works, it's super simple, and that's going to help obviously with dust control.
So here's the foot pedal, just a real simple foot pedal. It's cheap on Amazon, I think I paid $24-25 for this, but I was surprised with the quality. It has a nice grip on it, and it seems to be heavy duty. The other side of it, where it does the momentary activation, has a standard connection, and then in the back of that another standard connection. And that's super simple.
So this goes into your extension cord or whatever you're using, and then the tool goes into the back of that. And then anytime you activate the pedal, the vacuum comes on.
Obviously, with your foot, very convenient. So that's going to be something that's going to save some years of my life especially working with MDF.
Combined with a cordless saw, say goodbye to tripping breakers
But the best part about this setup is that since I'm running the Flexvolt, I'm not pulling all this power, and I'm going to break the circuit with the miter saw and with the vacuum at the same time.
We used to have a setup similar to this with my old miter saw; it was the old DEWALT one I used to have, same exact setup, just not battery powered. And we would trip the breakers pretty often in the houses, and it was a little inconvenient for us. And this little wheel that we have, this extension wheel, this extension cord wheel with the four outlets on it, it has a little breaker that trips too.
So sometimes it would trip that one, and sometimes it would trip the one in the house. But since this is on its own system, it's using the two 9-amp hour batteries, the 60-volt maxes; there's not going to be that issue with having this and this running at the same time. So they're not pulling power from one another.
Alright, so there you have it, that's four things that improve my job site set up at the miter saw. Maybe you can incorporate some of this into yours, and it makes me lot more efficient on the job site.
—Richard McMurray, of dfw Crown Molding, has a good pile of videos on YouTube.