HELP! - Adjusting Table Saw Blade

[Tim Dorcas]

I am trying to make my ts blade parallel to my miter slot. I have a General 50-220. The manual completely ignores how to accomplish this. Any one have any suggestions?

Tim

[Mark Rios]

I'm not familiar with your General TS but if it's a cabinet saw the table/miter slot adjusting should just be accomplished by loosening the table mounting bolts and nudging here and there to align it, while continually checking the blade to slot measurements of course.

If I missed your point and this doesn't apply then I apologize.


hth

[Eddie Darby]

This model is a cabinet saw, so you should be able to loosen the 4 bolts that hold the top onto the cabinet, and adjust it. I use a dead-blow rubber hammer to gently knock the top. You will need a dial guage that can be mounted in the mitre slot.

The trick is to pick the mitre slot that you use the most, as all slots are not parallel to each other, so you will end up with one slot that matches the blade perfectly.

If you want to be hyper-accurate, then I've read about a method that uses a large rectangular piece of plywood with a 5/8" hole in it on one end, in-place of the saw's blade. The plywood extends longer that the opening for the blade, and so sticks out on an angle over the top. You measure to 1 spot and mark that spot with an "X", so you can rotate the plywood to the other end, and then measure to the same spot again. This gives you a larger measurement error, and so the adjustment should be easier to spot.

If you like shopnotes:

http://www.shopnotes.com/main/sn77-toc.html

https://home.comcast.net/~rexmill/tablesaw/tablesaw_tuneup/Table_Saw_Set_Up.htm

[Tim Dorcas]

Thanks Eddie. I was hoping there was easy technique. I can see that's not the case :( I guess on the positive, I will know about my table saw.

Tim

[Charlie Plesums]

Tim, it's really not that complex... With a contractor saw, everything hangs from the table so you shift the blade (shift the trunions, etc. and all that holds the blade). But with a cabinet saw, the blade and associated hardware is mounted to the cabinet, so you shift the table top to match the blade.

Of course, though it may not be complex, the first issue is how do you know when it is right, and the second issue is how to keep the kids out of the area so they don't learn new words when you go tap tap tap "oh, golly gee whiz" (but probably substitute a phrase with fewer letters than gee whiz.)

[Eddie Darby]

Like most things in life that seem complicated at first, once you dive in, you somehow manage to re-surface again. This really isn't too hard, just a patience tester.

The good news is that once you get the mitre slot and blade aligned, you can put a piece of perfect fitting (no wiggle) 3/4" wood into the mitre slot, so that it is sticking up above the fence. Loosen the fence alignment bolts, and place the fence up against the wood, and clamp it to the 3/4" piece of wood in the mitre slot. Now tighten/lock your fence back in and now you have your fence/blade/mitre slot all aligned perfectly. Couldn't be easier!:D

If you start to get burning, it could be a dull blade or a dirty blade etc. ........ or it could be that you have lost the alignment, which happens from time to time, so it's back to square one, but you will find the whole process a lot quicker.

Once you tighten the bolts that secure the top onto the cabinet, check the alignment to make sure that when tightening the bolts nothing shifted. I would tighten each bolt a little at a time and rotate the tightening from one bolt to another. Have fun!

[glenn bradley]

No worries Tim. I think you'll find that it is pretty straight forward.

[CPeter James]

Here is an article that I did for the Guild of New Hampshire Woodworkers news letter, "The Old Saw".

http://home.metrocast.net/~cpjvkj/tstu.htm

CPeter

[Dan Montgomery]

Tim:

I have the General 650 and I have recently done this alignment. Like the others have said, with a cabinet saw the proceedure is straightforward. Here are a couple of things I discovered on my saw.

First, select a time you can devote to this without distraction and don't get in a hurry. The table is heavy and the movements for small adjustment take some getting used to. I used a rubber mallet as well as a wood block to get the table to move. I got my alignment to almost perfect (within well < .001 varience over the entire long side of one of those Super Bar plates), but not until I devoted some patience to the exercise. I figured if I was going to do this, I may as well do it once correctly and be done with it.

Like a previously post recommended, once you have your table set, tighten each of the four bolts just a bit at a time. I defined one bolt as my main pivot point, leaving it a bit tighter than the others during the adjustment.

Also, watch out for the 90 degree stop. If you happen to have your cradle (which rides in the trunnion) up tight against the stop bolt, you may get deflection. In that case, you may think you have everything perfect, then one day discover that you are not really in alignment once you move the cradle away from the stop bolt. That difference may be slight, depending on your saw, but it is something to consider. In my case, I made my adjustment with the stop bolt totally out of contact because I am in the habit of checking my 90 degree setting anyway if I move to another angle and then back again. Since I am at 90 degrees about 90 percent of the time, the stop is really not someting I need to rely on anyway for any kind of accuracy. I use it and the stop on my jointer as more or less a rough or approximate indicator and then make the final precision 90 degree setting and with an accurate square. Takes about 20 seconds.

After that, when I was sure that the slot/blade alignment was where I wanted it and locked in, I went ahead and adjusted my fence to the miter slot and adjusted the indicator on the fence rule. I was lucky, as I found no varience between my miter slots. Both indicated being parallell to the blade within that much< than .001 very slight movement on the dial indicator needle.


Finally, I made some test cuts to prove to myself that this was time well spent. It was. I routienly check my project pieces where the accuracy of the cut effects everything else (rail and stile joinery, drawers, etc.) and I am glad I did this excerise because the saw is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, always and consistantly, now that the proper adjustments have been made.

I hope this helps you some. Good luck.

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Hold on, folks.

All of the replies so far seem to assume that this is a cabinet saw. As far as I can tell ( I don't have one myself), the General 50-220 is a hybrid saw. This means that the alignment procedure will differ, depending on whether the turnnions are attached to the table (like a contractor's saw) or to the base (I thought only the Craftsman and Steel City hybrids used this design).

I found one review of the 50-220 on another forum that states "trunions are on the table." Does anyone know for sure?