Miter Saw tuning and adjustment

[Brian Dormer]

I was trying to "tune up" my miter saw this weekend (prior to installing it in it's new miter saw station "home"). I got the fence nice and perpendicular to the blade. But my Wixey Digital angle gauge is showing me that I can't get a repeatable tilt angle on the blade.

My saw is a Delta 10" - it's probably 10-12 years old. It has a big ratchet knob at the rear of the saw that locks the tilt mechanisim. I adjusted the tilt stop until I had 90 degrees exactly - but then tightening the big lock knob threw it off about .1 to .2 degrees. So I fiddled with it and discovered that how close I can get to straight up 90 is dependent on how much torque I appy to the big lock knob. So it's not very repeatable.

Does this sound right? Should I tell SWMBO that I need a new CMS? (Fathers day is coming!)

[Per Swenson]

Of course you need a new saw...everyone does.

But before you do that, there should be a set screw in the Head

that acts like a positive stop. There should be two actually,

one at 45 and 90. Get those right and you should be fine.

Of course if you don't have adjustability...well....

Honey, I just can't work like this. What do you think we should do?

Might be the best course of action.

Per

[Brian Dormer]

But before you do that, there should be a set screw in the Head

that acts like a positive stop. There should be two actually,

one at 45 and 90. Get those right and you should be fine.


Per -

That's exactly what I have. I can get the stop screw adjustments DEAD ON - and then tightening the big lock handle throws everything off kilter - by anything from 0.0 to 0.5 degrees, depending on how much torque I put on it.

I can, possibly, offset the stop screw adjustment to compensate for, say 0.3 degrees tilt, then torque down the lock handle until it zero's out. It's a pretty crude solution - but will work as long as I don't touch the tilt adjustment.

I was hoping there was some "trick" to this that I was unaware of.

The problem with having all these hyper-accurate measuring devices is that I'm a perfectionist and want all the measurements dead on.