David Weaver
04-04-2007, 11:52 AM
Good morning -
I'm supposedly getting a table saw in the next couple of days - we'll see how the freight goes - I got the fence and the sideboard, but apparently it wasn't important to ship the table saw with those.
Anyway, once it gets here, it's a brand and model notorious for not being set up square to the miter rail and fence (is "runout" the right term?).
I'm assuming that to get the saw set up correctly, the easy way to do things is to make sure the fence is running parallel to the miter slot, and then make sure the back and front of the blade are the same distance from miter slot - at least to within a couple of thousandths.
Is there a popular reasonably priced tool that is designed to fit in the miter slot with a dial indicator running perpendicular to measure the distance to the blade? I see various combinations of magnetic anchors and dial indicators, or either of those individually, and I also saw an article suggesting building one out of wood to fit in the miter slot, and then just using a set of dial calipers attached to the wooden jig to do the measuring. i don't really want to fool with that - especially planing the wood to fit in the slot within a thousandth, but I don't want a saw that's out even a hundredth of an inch front to back - I like to iron out errors before they get a chance to be cumulative - so I don't want to just get out a set of dial calipers and sort of eyeball things with them.
Does anyone have any suggestions? This tool is going to be used to set up only one table saw, so I'm not looking to spend $250 on the "starrett version" (or whoever else makes the definitive best). Durability isn't an issue since it'll be rarely used, but accuracy is. I've dropped a set of dial calipers before (and broken the dial), so I don't expect to buy a version that can be dropped.
I have all kinds of stuff (dial calipers, etc) from a reloading hobby, but I'd rather not mutate anything if I don't have to.
Thanks in advance, guys and gals.
I'm supposedly getting a table saw in the next couple of days - we'll see how the freight goes - I got the fence and the sideboard, but apparently it wasn't important to ship the table saw with those.
Anyway, once it gets here, it's a brand and model notorious for not being set up square to the miter rail and fence (is "runout" the right term?).
I'm assuming that to get the saw set up correctly, the easy way to do things is to make sure the fence is running parallel to the miter slot, and then make sure the back and front of the blade are the same distance from miter slot - at least to within a couple of thousandths.
Is there a popular reasonably priced tool that is designed to fit in the miter slot with a dial indicator running perpendicular to measure the distance to the blade? I see various combinations of magnetic anchors and dial indicators, or either of those individually, and I also saw an article suggesting building one out of wood to fit in the miter slot, and then just using a set of dial calipers attached to the wooden jig to do the measuring. i don't really want to fool with that - especially planing the wood to fit in the slot within a thousandth, but I don't want a saw that's out even a hundredth of an inch front to back - I like to iron out errors before they get a chance to be cumulative - so I don't want to just get out a set of dial calipers and sort of eyeball things with them.
Does anyone have any suggestions? This tool is going to be used to set up only one table saw, so I'm not looking to spend $250 on the "starrett version" (or whoever else makes the definitive best). Durability isn't an issue since it'll be rarely used, but accuracy is. I've dropped a set of dial calipers before (and broken the dial), so I don't expect to buy a version that can be dropped.
I have all kinds of stuff (dial calipers, etc) from a reloading hobby, but I'd rather not mutate anything if I don't have to.
Thanks in advance, guys and gals.