Chip-Free Plywood Crosscuts: Set the Depth, Score the Line, Tape the Cut

The Problem

Crosscutting plywood with a circular saw shreds the veneer — the blade's teeth exit through the face and lift the fibers into splinters. The folk remedy is a finer blade, and this carpenter's demo starts by killing that hope: a 42-tooth finishing blade and a 16-tooth framing blade both make chopsticks of the fibers if that's your only change.

The Technique

The clean cut is a stack of small moves, not one magic blade:

1. Set the depth right. Drop the blade so it clears the sheet by only a tooth or so. A shallow blade meets the veneer at a flatter angle and tears far less — this alone improves both blades in his comparison, and here the finer blade finally pulls ahead.
2. One clean face: score it. If only the show face matters, cut along your line first with a utility knife, severing the veneer fibers. The blade then breaks fibers at a line that's already cut — that face comes out crisp, though the far side still chips.
3. Both faces clean: tape the line. Run painter's tape over the cut path — and here's his emphasis: press the tape hard into the wood fibers, using the roll itself to burnish it down tight. Loosely laid tape does nothing.
4. Cut a little slower than normal, through the tape. Peel it back and both edges are clean.
5. The free alternative when only one face will show: put the good face down — a circular saw's teeth cut upward, so the downward face always gets the cleaner exit.