8 Essential Jigsaw tips for Smooth, Clean & Accurate Jigsaw cut
A Jigsaw is a machine saw which is powered by an electric motor, used to cut wood, metal, PVC and other materials.
Jigsaw can cut in various designs and curves but how to cut it accurately, smooth and clean is the most important thing to know while using your jigsaw.
So, the most essential Jigsaw tips that you should know for cutting smoothly and accurately are as follows:
8 Essential Jigsaw tips
1. Wear Goggles and Dust Mask
Dust is very bad for your health and even causes damage to your eyes. So, cover your nose and mouth with dust mask before making any cuts and to protect your eyes make sure you also wear goggles. If your ears are sensitive, then just make sure you wear best noise cancelling headphones.
2. Choosing the Right Jigsaw Blade
Make sure your Jigsaw is not faulty and before using the Jigsaw always, keeps in mind that is your jigsaw blade is compatible with the type of your material you are cutting? Even if you use a basic or more advanced jigsaw it is the blade that determines your cutting and smoothness. Poor blade choice may lead to inaccuracy.
To make your blade compatible with the material you are cutting you must choose:
- Type of blade material used in your blade (High carbon steel HCS, High speed steel, Bi-metal or Tungsten metal)
- Shanks (T shank or U shank)
- Other specialists’ blades (Reverse tooth blades, Plunge cut blades etc.
- Number of teeth a blade has for cutting hard and soft materials.
So, you cannot choose right jigsaw blade until you do not take into consideration the above given factors. In short, its your choice and knowledge that matters the most when choosing your blade and making it compatible. While changing your blade make sure you unplug the socket.
3. Use Pencil and Compass to draw the cuts
Marking is very important when you are making cuts while using your jigsaw, and sometimes we forgot where to put the cut at which angle or we take a break, so pencil mark reminds us where to cut with accuracy. Compass makes easy to draw an arc or curve.
4. Clamp your material with Kreg clamps
When you are working on a table make sure you clamp your material down because it gives you support and make your material immovable. So, when you are ready to cut something with a jigsaw make sure your wood, metal etc. is easily clamped down Even if you have any table other than regular table kreg clamps makes it very easy to clamp your material down.
Kreg clamps uses auto adjust mechanism that is built into the clamp handle it also automatically adjust your material thickness and locks the jaws down tight when you squeeze the padded handles.
Kreg clamps not only adjust automatically to match the thickness it also let you dial in the exact pressure you need and that’s done with an easy to use thumb screw you can just turn the thumb screw one way for heavier pressure or back the other for light pressure but ones it set your clamp hold that pressure every time and with every thickness. By locking the clamps you may not have to readjust the clamps.
5. Adjusting the jigsaw sole-plate
You can adjust the jigsaw sole-plate by loosening the screws or bolts on the bottom by adjusting the sole-plate we can easily bend the jigsaw and cut it even at the 45-degree angle make a beveled or angle coat in any material. Adjusting sole-plate is particularly useful for making cut for specific joints.
Do not put pressure on the sole-plate. We can easily turn our jigsaw around the sole-plate to give better and smooth curve. Make sure you may not touch the sole-plate during cutting because it may increase the risk of injury.
6. Use Clamp Edge Guide to Cut Straight
If you are using jigsaw to cut straight, then don’t cut straight without using straight edge guide. Always use the straight edge guide because it gives support to your jigsaw and makes easy to cut straight. Clamp edge guide is very useful in cutting doors.
Without using clamp edge guide you may easily damage your doors or other materials. Your jigsaw does not even leave any mark or any other damage when you are done using clamp edge guide. Make sure your clamp edge rode is not damaged because it may cause problem with clamping.
7. Contacting the base plate
To safely position the jigsaw on your workplace you must be contacting the base plate. And if you did not make the contact , if you’re tipped off and angled in either direction its going to catch on the blade and bounce around and feel very unstable, and not give you a good cut. And do not even put so much pressure on the base which may even have a bad impact on your cut.
After making a contact with the base plate then move your jigsaw slowly to make a smooth, clean and precise cut. When cutting with the jigsaw remember to be mindful of the cable at all times you can wrap the cable around your arm to stop it coming in your way and it also may stops it lying loosely around the cording surface.
8. Adjust the speed using speed dial
With the speed selector or speed dial you can turn the speed of your jigsaw up and down to the plus or the minus side. To turn it on you need to simply pull the trigger so that it may speeds up and when you release the trigger it stops. When you turn it into to the lowest or slowest settings and then hold the trigger then it goes very slowly.
This is very useful because if you want a precise cut then you can go to the slower or medium speed and if you want a speedy cut than you can go to the fastest speed mode.
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