Are your TS miter slots parallel?

[Mark Daily]

Yep...I was born and raised in a machine shop (and can run most machines). It is a blessing to be able to bring high quality measuring tools home for specific tasks, but I frequently have to remind myself I'm working with wood as I automatically want to work in .001"! As I said in my OP, .003" doesn't concern me, but I was curious if other table saws are also not quite parallel.

Just to keep things in perspective, a sheet of 24 lb paper measures .004”.

[Doug Dawson]

Entirely agree, a tape measure is something I use for rough work only. I don’t find a tape measure to be useful for measuring work pieces but they are repeatable so decent for corner to corner measures. I don’t recall if we even had a tape measure at the machine shop and I generally build without one.

It’s actually fairly common that we’re working to a high degree of accuracy but often remain unaware of it. Working with stops, utilizing reference faces and creeping up on a fit are all ways of doing so. A very tight mitered corner on a box, as example, can gap with a single plane shaving.

In fact, you can build an entire piece of furniture from start to finish without any measuring at all, using a story pole. And have it repeatable.

[Bruce Page]

Lisa, .003 is very good. What make & vintage is your saw?
Your post got me curious about mine. I used a more direct inspection methodology on my 20 year old Unisaw. It showed .000 on both front & back ends but drifted off .003 in the center. I can live with that.

[Lisa Starr]

Bruce, Believe it or not, it is a 2005 Grizzly G1023Z that I purchased new. I think I was lucky, because this particular saw seems to be very accurate.

[Mark Daily]

Bruce, Believe it or not, it is a 2005 Grizzly G1023Z that I purchased new. I think I was lucky, because this particular saw seems to be very accurate.

I have the G1023SL purchased the same year. Very accurate, solid and trouble-free.