The cut takes nine seconds and the setup takes twenty minutes

The job

Rip one 1x6 pine board down to 4 inches wide for a garage shelf. One cut, one board, one brand-new table saw.

How the rookie does it

This was me, a Saturday in May.

8:02 a.m. Unbox the saw. The manual opens with four pages of warnings. Skip to the pictures, because I'm a grown man with a pencil behind my ear.

8:40 a.m. Discover the blade guard and riving knife came in a separate plastic bag. They look like accessories. I set them on a shelf "for later."

9:15 a.m. Measure the board. Mark 4 inches with a carpenter's pencil the width of a crayon. Set the fence using the little scale on the front rail, which nobody at the factory has ever checked against anything.

9:20 a.m. Crank the blade all the way up. More blade feels like more saw.

9:22 a.m. Stand directly behind the blade, lined up like I'm about to roll a bowling ball.

9:23 a.m. Flip the switch. It's louder than I expected. My nine-year-old appears in the doorway with her hands over her ears and asks if it's supposed to sound like that.

9:24 a.m. Feed the board. Halfway through, it starts to drag. The motor bogs. The garage smells like a campfire. My instinct is to push harder, which is the wrong instinct.

9:25 a.m. Shut it off. The board is 4⅜ inches at one end, 3⅞ at the other, and scorched black along the whole edge.

10:05 a.m. My wife, who has never used a table saw, has read the manual. She hands it to me open to a page titled "Aligning the Rip Fence," with the riving knife bag sitting on top of it. She was right on both counts.

11:30 a.m. Third trip to the hardware store. New board. Also, it turns out the saw came with a push stick. It was in the bag.

How the veteran does it

My neighbor Ray has built cabinets for thirty years. He came over that afternoon "just to look," which is how veterans say "before you lose a finger."

He unplugged the saw first. Didn't flip the switch off. Pulled the plug out of the wall and laid it on the table where he could see it.

Then he set a combination square against the blade to check it was 90 degrees to the table. He picked one tooth, marked it with a pencil, measured from that tooth to the fence at the front of the blade, rotated the blade by hand, and measured the same tooth at the back. They were off by an eighth of an inch. That was my scorched board, right there. The fence was squeezing the wood into the back of the blade.

He fixed the fence, put the riving knife and guard on, and dropped the blade until the teeth cleared the top of the board by about a quarter inch.

Then he looked at the wood. Sighted down the edge like he was checking a rifle barrel. Picked the straighter edge to ride the fence. Set it down flat to make sure it didn't rock.

He measured 4 inches from the fence to a tooth that leaned toward the fence, not off the rail scale. (If marking and measuring is where your cuts go wrong, start with Measure and Mark So the Cut Is Right the First Time.) He set a sawhorse behind the saw to catch the board as it came off.

Safety glasses. Ear protection. Sleeves rolled. No gloves. Push stick on the table, within reach, before the saw was ever plugged back in.

Then he stood to the left of the blade, out of its line, and switched on.

The cut took about nine seconds. Steady feed, left hand pressing the board against the fence well ahead of the blade, push stick taking over for the last stretch. He pushed the board fully past the blade, switched off, and waited until the blade stopped before he reached for anything.

Clean edge. Exactly 4 inches. No smoke.

Before he left, he swept up and hung the push stick on a nail by the switch. My saw was better tuned when he walked out than the day it came out of the box. That's Ray.

What the veteran knows

1. Unplug the saw before you touch the blade, the throat plate or the alignment. The switch isn't enough. The plug in your hand is.

1. The riving knife and guard go on and stay on. The riving knife keeps the cut open behind the blade so the wood can't pinch the back teeth. That pinch is what throws a board back at you. This is kickback, and it causes serious injuries.

1. Check that the fence is parallel to the blade. Measure one marked tooth at the front and back of the blade. If the fence closes in toward the back, you'll get binding, burning and kickback. Many woodworkers set the back a hair wider on purpose. Never narrower.

1. Rip with the fence. Crosscut with the miter gauge or a sled. Never crosscut a short piece against the fence, and never use the fence and miter gauge together for a cut where the offcut ends up trapped between them. And never cut freehand. Ever.

1. Only flat, straight wood goes on the saw. If it rocks on the table or the edge is bowed, it isn't ready. Straighten it first or pick another board.

1. Keep the blade about a quarter inch above the wood, and keep your hands well clear of it. If your hand would come within about six inches of the blade, the push stick does the work. Narrow rips always get a push stick.

1. Stand out of the line of the blade. If a board ever comes back, it comes straight back. Don't be there. Glasses and hearing protection every time. No gloves, no loose sleeves, no dangling cords.

1. Never reach over, around or behind a spinning blade. If the cut binds, hold the board still, switch off, and wait for a full stop. Offcuts can wait ten seconds. Your hand can't be replaced.

Every one of those rules gets a deeper look in Everything I Do Differently After the Shop Hurt Me. Read it before your second cut. Better yet, before your first.

Your first time, done like a veteran

• Saw unplugged while you set up
• Blade checked square to the table
• Fence checked parallel, using the same tooth front and back
• Riving knife and guard installed
• Blade roughly a quarter inch above the wood
• Board flat, straight edge against the fence
• Width measured to a tooth, not the rail scale
• Push stick on the table before you plug in
• Outfeed support for anything longer than the table (a sawbench works)
• Glasses, ear protection, sleeves up, no gloves
• Stand to the side of the blade, not behind it
• Feed steadily, push all the way through, switch off, wait for the blade to stop
• Sweep up and hang the push stick where the next person will find it

Twenty minutes of setup feels like a long time to spend on a nine-second cut. Ray would tell you the twenty minutes is the job, and the cut is just the part everybody watches.