Tech Talk: What Tools Require Training to Use Properly?

Al Carvalho
Max Hardwood Floors Corp.

We should be careful with them and do basic training on any power tools like miter saws or table saws. I don’t want any of those guys to be on a saw during their first week, at the very least. We’ll do basic safety training on the machine itself, what it does, what it can do, and how easily it can hurt you. Show them how it works and how you should operate it, then let them do something simple and stand by them the first few cuts or the first few times they use the machine. Safety would be my top priority with training on tools. We all know fingers only grow once.

 

Todd McDonald
Maple Ridge Handscraped

A tape measure and a straight edge. A lot of people starting out don’t know how to read a tape measure correctly. Mark it on a board in big letters and show them how to do it. If they are cutting something and it’s off, it could waste a board if it’s too short or cause many trips back and forth to make cuts. If they’re measuring something and it’s done incorrectly it could throw the square footage off. Reading a measuring device and then learning simple math to figure square footage or even something as simple as calculating the lineal footage for shoe moulding on a job is important.

 

Tom Ourada
Ourada Designs

The scraper is a simple tool, but it takes a little finesse to figure out. It will get dull pretty quick depending on what you are scraping. Some finishes dull it immediately and then it makes your work 10 times harder. If you don’t know the correct way to sharpen it, you might sharpen it so it cuts a little bit, but it doesn’t last very long and it’s frustrating. When I first started and this happened to me, my brother would laugh at me, grab the scraper, sharpen it, and give it back to me. So, I would say learning how to sharpen a scraper is a big deal and is a lesson I would teach a new person coming into wood flooring.