Ripping really small pieces on the table saw can be awkward and kind of a dangerous thing to do. One way to do it would be to try to get your fence very, very close to the blades so that that small part that you're ripping is between the blade and the fence. In this case I can’t get the fence as close as I needed to the blade because the guard’s on the way and I don’t want to take the guard off. What I want to try to do in this case is rip some really, really thin parts I can use for a bent lamination. So I've got an alternative method for this it's a shop made jig I'm pretty excited about.

This is the jig here and what we need to do is we have to be able to fasten this jig down to the table saw. So the way that I do this is with these magnets, they're pretty cool things inside each of this as a rare earth magnet. I've got one here that’s not installed, this is the same device. There are two rare earth magnets inside this. When I turn the switch the polarity on those magnets is aligned. So it basically doubles the power of the magnet. When I turn at the other way, to an off position then the polarity cancels each other so it shots the magnetic field off.

So when I put this down to the table right now it doesn’t do anything when I turn that to an on position, now that’s clamp right onto the cast iron table. So when my jig, I've used two of those. That’s going to let me position this jig any place I want it, turn those on and now that’s fastened down. On this end of the jig I've got a threaded bolt. That bolt goes into a threaded insert which is in the body of the jig.

So I've got a 1/4-20 insert here in the plywood body that takes this 1/4-20 bolt. So what this is going to let me do, you'll see in just a second is do infinite adjustments on my setup. So here’s the way I want to make this work. I've got the power shut off to the saw so that I can put a straight edge against the blade and make a line on the saw table. Now, this line indicates the left side of my saw blade. The parts that I cut for bent lamination are going to come off the left side of the blade.

Now, what I can do is position is jig so that the head of the bolt is the distance from the line in other words the thickness of the rip that I want to make, so I'm measuring from the head of the bolt to the line lock the magnets. Now, because I can turn the bolt I can find to that position just a little bit. Make sure it's exactly where I want it to be. And then when I spin that wing knot that locks the bolt position against the jig.

Now, the way this works is that your board goes against the fence and then slides over until it gently kisses the head of that bolt and then we’ll be ready to make the cut. There’s one piece, now of course, if I'm doing a bent lamination where I'm going to pull this into a shape, I need more than one. So now, we put the piece against the fence again slide to the head of the bolt again. Make another cut we’ll just keep repeating that process.

The simple shot of the jig makes ripping small parts very easy, very safe whether you use them for bent laminations like this or for edge banding for a cabinet, great way to make small parts. The magnets themselves are available at specialty woodworking stores couple of different sizes available depending on what you're using them for, it's a great thing to have around your shop for this shop made jigs that you need to make order safer and easier.