Easy Ways to Cut Wood Floors

Round Cuts

• If you are working with specialty products that require you to cut wood in irregular angles or circles, a jigsaw is the tool of choice when working with wood. Using a plunge blade, the jigsaw is capable of maneuvering around any type of circle or other area where a straight-cutting saw could not, which means you can quickly and easily cut out around pipes and other round fixtures in the floor.

Long Cuts

• The tool of choice for ripping boards down along their length is a table saw. They are best used for baseboards or planking that you can easily maneuver in place on top of the table saw blade and control as you push through the blade. While table saws such as circular saws or miter saws can also be used to cut wood, they are designed for long cuts in which you have to rip the wood down to size.

Miter Saws

• While it is generally reserved for trim work, a miter saw, otherwise known as a plunge saw, is a tool for cutting pieces of wood such as planking trips, floor joists or other types of boards that need to be cut across their width, rather than their length. The wood is placed in the tray of the saw, the blade is pulled down into the material and you can quickly and easily cut the wood off at a variety of angles, or straight if you choose.

Circular Saw

• Although they can be used to cut the ends off of boards and other plank material, the circular saw is the tool of choice when you need to rip long sheet-type materials down to size, such as plywood. Because plywood sheets are heavy and hard to maneuver into place on top of a table saw, the preferred method is to snap a chalk line across the sheet while it lies on the floor, then cut across the line with the hand-held circular saw.