Table bed protection

[Marinus]

What I need to know is, how do you guys protect the bed or surface of your MM, When you do through cuts? Do you put a MDF underneath that gets damadged and replaced or what?

[sailfl]

Marinus,

You place a piece of 0.75" piece of MDF on the table crossbars. This makes the table stronger so it won't move. You had another 0.75" piece of MDF on top of the first piece. This is a spoilboard. This takes a beating. You lay the piece you want to cut on top of the spoilboard. As you cut lots of material, the spoilboard gets lots of cut marks in it. When you want a smooth spoilboard, you take out your resurfacing bit, Onsrud 91-000 for me, and you resurface the spoilboard so that it is smooth. You keep doing this until you reach the first 0.75" piece of MDF and then you put another piece on the top.

Hope that helps.

[Gerald D]

Also see:

What is the purpose of a spoil board or bleeder board?

Fixing the spoilboard to the support board

Choice of support board materials

All of these listed in the 10. Base Table section of this forum, near the top.

[Kobus_Joubert]

I used a 32mm plywood for my base table. Then a 9mm mdf spoilboard on top of that to cut into.