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Thread: Had the strangest table saw problem last night

  1. #1
    Mike Schwing Guest

    Had the strangest table saw problem last night

    I was cutting up a sheet of 3/4" plywood as usual. I rely heavily on vertical featherboards on the fence to hold the ply in place / give me a 3rd hand. Made the first couple of cuts with no problem whatsoever.

    Moved the fence a bit, made the next cut and it wouldn't go but half way through. Hmmm. Bogged down, got very hard to push, seemed to be binding. Blade got hot. Thought it might be pinching, but it was good quality plywood - not likely to pinch back around the blade. Tried raising the blade, then a cut with it even lower. Same problem. What the heck? Noticed burning/build up on the blade. Couldn't imagine it was caused by a dirty blade that had been perfectly clean a couple of days ago, but I decided to clean it again anyhow. Same problem. Could the fence be misaligned somehow? Get out the dial indicator - geez, its only off by .002" front to back, but I get it to within .001 just for grins. No way is that causing the problem. What the HECK is my problem?

    This was my problem. I only adjusted ONE of the featherboards before I began, and the first few cuts I made were with the fence (Saw Train) locked in place as normal, but for the second series of cuts I had locked the fence itself down using the secondary lock which prohibits any and ALL movement of that fence. The fact that the featherboard was set too low wasn't a problem in the first set because the fence lifted up just a bit when confronted with the pressure, but it wouldn't budge on the second set of cuts, so it got really hard to push - in fact it stopped progress cold.

    So I got a newly cleaned blade and a better aligned fence all for the sake of not checking the featherboard.

    Let that be a lesson to me.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Oak Harbor, Whidbey Island, WA
    Posts
    2,550
    Ah yes with older age comes wisdom. So now we know how the older generation got so wise. It is nice to have clean blades, & a re-aligned fence too.
    I usually find it much easier to be wrong once in while than to try to be perfect.

    My web page has a pop up. It is a free site, just close the pop up on the right side of the screen

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