Doug Shepard
06-02-2005, 9:56 PM
Last weekend I attempted to resaw some slices about 1/16" thick from some 1/2"x4"x4" Corian pieces for use as some inlay. This is on a Jet 14" BS with a relatively new Highland Hardware Woodslicer blade. The blade choice was partially from impatience of not wanting to bother with a blade change for such a 'minor 1/2 hour' task, and not being sure I really had a more appropriate blade anyway. I was using a homemade MDF fence also around 4" high, and lowered the guides down to about 1/2" of clearance above the corian and fence. Blade was tensioned appropriately and I made several test cuts on scrap wood until I was getting good consistent thickness slices and blade drift seemed to be accounted for.
So I make the first Corian cut. Beautiful! Nice clean slice of consistent thickness. No burning, or screeching. And cut quality was good so I proceed to try for the next slice. Nothing I did from that point forward could duplicate that first slice. There was no barreling of the cut, but I could not stop the cuts from exiting early out of the face, so I ended up with a bunch of tapered wedges going from 1/16" down to 0". This was both using other factory-fresh pieces as well as using the disk sander to re-flatten the face of pieces I'd previously wedge-cut. Really stumped - I switch back to cutting wood scraps with the same setup and don't have any problem. Could that very first slice cut - which couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds - dulled the blade that fast that it will no longer cut Corian without problems?? Still seems to cut both the wood and Corian cleanly, just not accurately on the Corian. Puzzled.
So I make the first Corian cut. Beautiful! Nice clean slice of consistent thickness. No burning, or screeching. And cut quality was good so I proceed to try for the next slice. Nothing I did from that point forward could duplicate that first slice. There was no barreling of the cut, but I could not stop the cuts from exiting early out of the face, so I ended up with a bunch of tapered wedges going from 1/16" down to 0". This was both using other factory-fresh pieces as well as using the disk sander to re-flatten the face of pieces I'd previously wedge-cut. Really stumped - I switch back to cutting wood scraps with the same setup and don't have any problem. Could that very first slice cut - which couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds - dulled the blade that fast that it will no longer cut Corian without problems?? Still seems to cut both the wood and Corian cleanly, just not accurately on the Corian. Puzzled.