The No-Fuss Jigsaw Trick For Cutting Out The Middle Of Wood

Jigsaws are essential power tools, allowing you to make both straight and detailed curved cuts. You can create several amazing DIY projects with a jigsaw tool. One of the most popular uses for this type of power saw is for cutting a hole or panel out of the middle of a piece of wood.

Jigsaws may not be one of the most important tools every homeowner should have, but they're great to have when working in a tight space because they're smaller than other kinds of power saws. If you want to cut out the middle of a piece of wood, you just need to drill a hole to give your jigsaw a place to start. Grab your power drill and a bit that has a large enough diameter to accommodate the width of the jigsaw blade without having the blade touch the sides of the hole. To pick the right jigsaw blade, pay attention to the thickness and type of the wood where you're cutting out the hole. Most jigsaw wood blades will easily go through softwood up to 1 ½ inches in thickness and hardwood up to ¾ of an inch. If the board is thicker, the jigsaw blade will begin to bend, causing it to make a beveled cut instead of a clean right-angle cut. To go through thicker pieces, you need a high-quality jigsaw, a blade that's at least 1 inch longer than the thickness of the wood, and the time to move the saw slowly.

Although cutting a panel out of the middle of a piece of wood is easy, you may encounter some challenges with this process. Most jigsaw blades are thin and flexible, which allows them to make curved cuts that aren't possible with thicker blades on some other saws. If you're cutting a circular hole, the thin blade is ideal. If you're cutting a square hole, though, you may want to switch to a thicker blade that makes it easier to cut straight lines. To help with straight cuts using a jigsaw blade, you can also clamp another piece of wood over the piece where you want to make the square hole. Place the edge of the wood guide along the line you want to cut and use it to manage your straight cut for the square hole.

Start this project by drawing the area you want to cut with a pencil. Make the drawing accurate, as you'll use the lines as a template. Then, use your power drill to make a hole just inside one of the corners of the shape you want to cut. Insert the jigsaw blade into the hole, and start cutting inside the drawn line. You can cut in a rough circle to get the main chunk of wood out of the way. Then, go back and carefully cut along the line to make sharp corners.

If you don't want to use a drill to make the starter hole in the piece of wood that you're cutting with a jigsaw, you could use a plunge saw. The plunge saw makes a plunge cut in the wood. When you turn on the tool, the spinning blade drops into the wood. You'd then have a hole in the wood where you can start using the jigsaw.

One of the advantages of using a plunge saw instead of a drill is that the plunge saw makes extremely accurate cuts with minimal splintering. You can make the hole very close to the line for the hole that you want to cut from the middle of the wood. The plunge saw delivers the cut quickly, which means you can speed up the process. If you have to use the jigsaw to make a lot of holes in the middle of pieces of wood, this tool might make the overall job go faster.

One of the disadvantages of relying on a plunge saw (or track saw) is that it's an expensive, specialized tool many people might not own. Even the cheapest cordless drill from Home Depot, meanwhile, works well for most jobs, including creating a starter hole for a jigsaw. Many people already own and use cordless drills regularly. As long as you have a large enough drill bit to accommodate the jigsaw blade, creating a starter hole with a drill is an popular option.