: I ripped my first 2x10x12' today (after quite a bit of practice on
: scrap), and ran into a few issues.

: My cuts on scrap weren't completely straight once I was handling a
: 12' board, so I decided to do 1/4" cuts and use the planer
: to bring them down to 3/16". As the imperfections added up,
: sections of a 1/4" strips approached 3/16". I'd plane
: down the high parts of the board's edge a bit, but eventually
: just flipped the board and worked from the other side. Is this
: the best way to go? No huge deal but I have a 2x12"
: tomorrow so flipping may not be the best option (I could always
: flip the board and then rip as many inches as the narrow) point.

: I'm wondering if a) the best way to improve cuts and b) how to
: clear up bad board edges.

It is tough to say what to do without knowing better the source of your troubles. However, I suggest that you consider the following, at least the things that you are not already trying:

1. Extend your fence as suggested by Bill; this might help you keep the lumber aligned during the cut. The fence will need to be straight and stiff - this can be trickier to arrange than you might expect.

2. Use a strong fingerboard pressing your plank tight to the fence immediately before the plank enters your blade. You could also consider a splitter behind the blade, and fingerboard(s) pressing the plank down against the saw table before, beside and behind the blade. This latter arrangement may require you to heighten your fence to allow clamping of fingerboards to it. Adjust the lateral fingerboard after each cut to ensure that all ripping is done with the plank pressed tightly to the fence.

3. If you have them, use rollers to support your boards in front of and behind your saw. If you don't have rollers, boards or pieces of plywood supported by clamping to the saw at the inboard ends and by vertical boards clamped sawhorses at the outboard ends work well. Supporting the boards this way makes them easier to control, and reduces the likelihood of inadvertently prying the board away from the rip fence and compromising the cut.

4. Split your 2x12 down the middle first so you are only handling 2x6 or smaller lumber during the remainder of your ripping. The smaller boards will be easier to control, and you will have four edges to work from instead of only two if cuts start to deteriorate. You could also consider ripping the 2x6's into 2x3's next for the same reason. This may seem slightly less efficient, but it sounds as though you are suffering inefficiency anyway due to cut deterioration, and splitting the boards twice first will limit the compounding of problems.

5. If the initial edges of your lumber are not straight to start with, you can use either a jointer or your table saw to generate a straight edge, but, as you seem to have already discovered neither is necessarily easy or very effective over a 12 foot length. If I was stuck with an initial 12' edge that I could not live with, I would snap a chalk line, say, ~one inch from one edge, and hot glue strips of 1/4" plywood ripped to say, 1 1/4" along the chalk line. The overhanging edge of the plywood strips could then serve as the reference surface to press against your rip fence when you make your first cut down the middle of your plank. Then I'd knock the plywood strips off shear-wise so as to do as little damage as possible to the plank. Subsequent rips would be from the center cut which should be pretty straight.

The bottom line is that if you start with a straight edge, and keep it pressed to the fence, your cut should be quite close to straight no matter what length your fence is. The trouble with the short fence is that the short length makes it easier during pushing the plank to pry it away from the fence and thereby screw up the cut. The best way of avoiding that, short of having a very long, straight, stiff fence, is to use a fingerboard to press the stock tightly to the fence during the cut. The shorter the fence, the stronger the fingerboard will need to be to avoid inadvertent prying of the board away from the fence surface.

The end of the cut can be troublesome. If your lateral fingerboard presses the source stock laterally after it enters the blade, it will snipe off a bit of extra wood at the end of the cut because as the cut finishes, the fingerboard will be pushing the stock against the spinning blade, not the fence. OTOH, if the stock is not pressed laterally during the last bit of the cut, the stock can diverge away from the fence, making the ripped strip slightly thinner at the end, and leaving a slight bit of extra width at the end of the source stock. The next time through, the problem increases another increment, and by multiple passes, it gets right out of hand. The best way to keep this under control is first, to split your board to limit the number of passes through which this type of thing can compound on itself, second, to set your lateral finger board to press the stock until and only until just immediately before the stock enters the blade, and third to try to be very careful to push the stock straight past the blade during the last bit of the cut. I find it best to push the strip, not the source stock so that as soon as the cut is complete, the source stock will just stop and you can (with a push stick of course), move it away from the blade without removing any extra wood.

If in spite of your efforts, your cut starts to get sloppy, by all means flip the plank and work from the other edge, provided of course that the other edge is straight.

Good luck, I hope that something here is helpful to you.

Best regards,

Allan Edie