Half lapped torsion box ribs with a track saw

Video Description

One common way to build the grid inside a torsion box is to have the ribs in one direction be full length while using shorter pieces between them in the other direction. But assembling the grid is much easier if they’re all full length with half laps to allow them to cross. One way to cut those half laps is to stack all the ribs together and do one gang cut with a dado blade, but cross cuts on a table saw get more awkward as the length of the ribs gets longer, and torsion boxes want to be big. In this video I demonstrate a way to gang cut those half laps using a track saw (a Festool TS-60 in this case) on an MFT (a @dashboardportableworkshop in this case). For this demo I’m building a “practice torsion box” which is only about 32 inches square, but I chose this technique because it should work equally well for the 96 inch ribs of a 4x8 torsion box that I want to build. I mention a cool video where @AndyRawls makes a huge torsion box using a CNC to cut the half laps. Here it is: https://youtu.be/UAKZk6HVASc?si=NgdoejIOuhQg3gdC