Table saw tuneup questions.

[Chris Konikowski]

Hey, I remembered reading that you can take a piece of wood and label the four side, make a cut, turn cut,turn, cut, turn, cut, turn back to the original side and cut a strip off and measure front and back.

I did this last night. My question is, on the four cuts, I just took off enough to clean up the edge. Is that fine? Also, the final strip I cut was about an inch wide. Is that fine?

Results: Front to back with a ~10 1/4" wide strip I could barely squeeze a .002" feeler guage from back to front. Is this acceptable? My first attempt was about .025" of an inch off. I adjusted the fence once.

This is on a Grizzly G0576 with a Freud blade running at 220. Power is comming off a 10g extension I made yesterday plugging into my drier plug. extension is about 20' long.

Would you change anything on this setup or is it ready to work?

[Joe Chritz]

Not sure how you are using the feeler gauge but if it is .002 over 10 1/4 inches that is probably plenty satisfactory. I just measure the front and back with dial calipers.

I use that method for making crosscut sleds and it works very well. The fence is out by half the difference from front to back.

Just trimming the first is fine since all you want is to establish an edge cut by the fence.

Joe

[Chris Konikowski]

Not sure how you are using the feeler gauge but if it is .002 over 10 1/4 inches that is probably plenty satisfactory. I just measure the front and back with dial calipers.

I use that method for making crosscut sleds and it works very well. The fence is out by half the difference from front to back.

Just trimming the first is fine since all you want is to establish an edge cut by the fence.

Joe

Sorry, I used a set of dial calipers, determined the bigger side, measured it, locked the callipers and went to the other side then used the feeler gauge. Guess I left that out...

[Chris Konikowski]

Well, I just dug up the post, and it seems that this method is for alligning your miter gauge. Does this method work for the fence as well, or did I just play around for nothing?

My miter gauge was about 1/4" out of allignment. :eek: This is how I got it from the guy I picked the saw up from. Coulda bumped it in the move though, but the gauge read 0 degrees...

[Nissim Avrahami]

It's called "5 cut test"....

http://www.thewoodshop.20m.com/five_cut_method_swf.htm

niki

[Chris Konikowski]

That is what I just found. Does that work for the fence the same as it does for the miter gauge?

[Chris Padilla]

I think it would work just fine for a fence check, Chris.

[Chris Konikowski]

So the tutorial says less than .001". That seems pretty crazy for woodwork. I almost fell on the floor when it checked out at about .002". Seems like that was just luck, but I don't think I want to touch it right now. :)

Is my thinking correct?

[Roger Warford]

If I understand the five-cut method correctly, that .002 measure represents the error over the cumulative distance of all four sides of your test board, about 41" in this case. If I did my math correctly, that put's the error on the order of 0.0028 degrees. Not too shabby.

I've read others that claimed to achieve that accuracy and better using the five cut method when setting up a cross cut sled. I recently built a sled and used the five cut method to set the fence. If I did the test correctly, and am measuring correctly, my digital guage indicates the error is less than .001" over a similar distance (between 40" and 60"). I too was more than a little surprised. I've tripled checked the numbers and they seem to keep coming up the same. I worked carefully wedging paper shims between the fence and a stop block clamped to the sled. But still, I didn't really expect to be that accurate. I'm skeptical but can't see what I might be doing wrong.

Perhaps others can confirm that Chris and I can have confidence in our numbers. Or is it unreasonable to believe that someone relatively new to woodworking like myself could be that accurate?

I never thought using it to set the fence. I'll have to try that. I should be able to compare the five-cut measurements to a direct reading using a dial guage.

Chris, do you have a dial guage that you could use to double check your numbers?

[Bill Huber]

Maybe I am way off in left field here but from reading these post it looks like we are talking apples and oranges here.

Fist check that the extension to the top of the saw and made sure they are flat and even with the table.

Then check the blade to the miter slot, this can be done in many different ways. I use a super bar and a dial indicator.

Once this is done then you need to check the fence to the miter slot, I use the same tool here just turned around.

Once both of them have been set then you can set the miter gauge for squareness with the 5 cut method.

Here is a good write up on setting up a table saw.
http://www.newwoodworker.com/basic/tsalign.html

[Chris Konikowski]

Here is a good write up on setting up a table saw.
http://www.newwoodworker.com/basic/tsalign.html

Perfect! That is exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks,

[Pete Bradley]

I don't think the 5-cut test applies to fences. With a miter gauge, the difference gauges how far off 90 degress the miter is. With the fence, you'd be measuring the taper of the cut, except that you can't cut a taper with a fence alone no matter how far off parallel the blade is to the fence. That's why a taper jig is used, to move an angled workpiece through the blade.

You also mention that you're taking shaving cuts. This can cause the running blade to flex a bit. There will be other minor sources of deviation, but every two turns, you'll cut off the previous deviation and introduce a similar one. What you're measuring is that, plus the uncertainty of using a feeler gauge on wood.

Pete

[John Thompson]

I don't think the 5-cut test applies to fences. With a miter gauge, the difference gauges how far off 90 degress the miter is. With the fence, you'd be measuring the taper of the cut, except that you can't cut a taper with a fence alone no matter how far off parallel the blade is to the fence. That's why a taper jig is used, to move an angled workpiece through the blade.

You also mention that you're taking shaving cuts. This can cause the running blade to flex a bit. There will be other minor sources of deviation, but every two turns, you'll cut off the previous deviation and introduce a similar one. What you're measuring is that, plus the uncertainty of using a feeler gauge on wood.

Pete

"You also mention that you're taking shaving cuts. This can cause the running blade to flex a bit".. Pete

Yep....

Sarge..