Cutting Boards - Part 13

I did not publish anything last week because I totally and completely forgot about it. I continue making kitchen boards and am currently gluing up the third batch. Together with that, I am also continuing to improve my equipment. So today I would like to mention three improvements that I made "by the way".

When cutting material for kitchen boards, I sometimes need to cut off just a thin sliver of material. The standard insert delivered with my table saw had too much space around the blade, so such pieces could fall through and choke up the dust exhaust. So I took an offcut of particle board and made a new zero-tolerance insert. I can of course cut only at a right angle with it, but that is the only angle I need for kitchen boards, so that's not a problem.

The second issue was dust collection. Without the paper bag, the dust filter got choked with fine dust very quickly, and the paper bag was difficult to get out of the vacuum when it was full. Not to mention that the paper bags do not take too long to fill up and they are not exactly cheap, especially considering their small volume. Thus I fished an old pillowcase from the wardrobe, cut a hole in the middle, and glued in the rubber collar from my last paper bag. It works perfectly, I won't need to by buying paper bags again because I can empty the sawdust from the pillow case without damaging it. And because it is stronger and more flexible than paper bags, it is also easier to dig out of the vacuum when I forget to empty it on time and it gets overfilled.

And my last improvement is five pairs of wooden shims of different thicknesses. They will be used to prop up the glued boards when flattening them and I am sure I will have other uses for them around the workshop as well.