Last year, I boosted my woodworking capabilities by purchasing a router, which among other things, played a key role in helping build some bookshelves. One of the things that was still tricky was cutting long, straight lines. With a suitable guide clamped to the surface, my old jigsaw would do a reasonable job on thinner material but it was problematic through thicker stock – hard going and the blade could bend while cutting, providing an unwanted profile.

What I really needed was something like a circular saw and I picked one of those up yesterday (hence the appalling pun in the title of this post). This morning I pressed it into use chopping up an old pine table top to make some chair seats. The pine was about 3cm thick and the circular saw made light work of it. The router got an outing too, rounding the edges, and even that old jigsaw, which was just about up to cutting a few corner curves.

I wish I’d bought it last year, when it would have saved a lot of time and several dodgy cuts but, now I’ve got a circular saw, time to think about what other pending projects it will serve well.