Building An Off-Grid Cabin In The Forest: Finishing Trim, And Ripping Boards Using A Circular Saw

I needed to trim the width of some boards. (Almost forgot to say, I don't have a table saw, yet, or I'd be using that instead.) I thought that I could do an ok job freehanded. NOT (...in my robot voice). The boards turned out wavy as Ruffles potato chips. I tried several times, and the end product always ended up unusable. I then started clamping a long straight edge onto the board, or plywood I wanted to rip. This worked pretty good, but was a bit tedious, to set up every time. And I had to be double sure my straight edge was straight.

Thinking that there has got to be a better way... I looked up fence guides online, and found that most were not capable of ripping wide planks from plywood. Which is what I wanted to do. Then I found the Kreg KMA2685 Rip-Cut 24-Inch Precision Circular Saw Edge Guide on Amazon. The reviews were promising, so I ordered it.

It was a little tricky so setup initially, but after that is is really simple. By setup, I mean attaching it to your circular saw's foot plate. Kreg has make this as simple as possible though. All I needed was a phillips head screwdriver. And yes, it does come with instructions.

Close up of the mounting plate.

Mounted and ready to RIP.

I needed to take 1/16th off a 1x4 board. I didn't think I could do it neatly enough. Wow! Veneer. It is cut so thin it curled... a perfect cut too.

Pull up on the adjustment lever to for the desired width. It goes up to 24".

Here is an example of cutting a 1x4 pallet-wood board.

This Kreg KMA2685 Rip-Cut 24-Inch Precision Circular Saw Edge Guide works great, and can be seen here at Amazon. As of posting it is $39.

To be continued...