I am building some Shaker style flat panel cabinet doors. The frames are being constructed from poplar.
I set up to cut the stiles to length on my crosscut sled. I had a Diablo 80TPI “fine finish” blade in the saw. I took a squaring cut from the left side of the blade which was perfect. I slid the stock down to the stop block and ran it through on the right side of the blade and it was a disaster. The cut was very rough with pitted end grain and fuzzy edges, particularly the trailing edge, which had a burr on it that actually grabbed the kerf edge in the sled’s fence. Can somebody tell me what would cause that and what I can do about it? I repeated the processes on some scrap with the same result each time. The blade isn’t new, but hasn’t been abused. I didn’t see anything glaring on cursory visual inspection.
Thanks
David Waterbury
Replies
It sounds like the sled is not perfectly square to the blade. On one side only the leading teeth make contact, on the other the back of the blade or even the back edge of the leading teeth is scraping as you pass through.
Thanks. Since I haven't used the sled in a while, I checked for square with the blade and it seemed to be. I'll check again.
Also, how are you securing the work to the sled? Are you holding the material on each side of the blade? Just as in ripping, if the off-cut is small or light enough to move about once it has separated from the blank it can get struck oddly by the blade. Holding the material to the fence is often enough if you have a bit of abrasive on the fence for grip.
The sled is guided by the slots in the table, the slots need to be perfectly parallel to the blade. The sled can be off, it will not cut square but will not cause roughness. The movement however, dictated by the slots, needs to be perfectly aligned with the blade otherwise the rear of the blade will raise a burr and could create a kickback.
Thanks. I have checked the alignment of my miter slots to my blade with a dial indicator in the past and it was spot on. I have not done anything that should have shifted it out of alignment, but i will check again. Also, although it is only a 2 inch wide piece, I checked the squaring cut with a combo square and it seemed to be square.
If all is square, then its blade sharpening or something is loose in the drive train. I recently removed the table top from my unisaw planing to replace the bearings that I had replaced only a few years ago , there was a loud noise and I could feel movement in the main shaft , turns out the nut holding everything together was loose, as well as the set screw keeping those from spinning loose, now all I hear is the wind noise from the spinning blade and cuts are effortless.
I want to thank everyone for their responses. They were all helpful in narrowing down the process of troubleshooting this issue. After reading them all I went back to the shop to methodically go through the suggested problems. Fortuitously, I began by conducting a careful visual inspection of the blade. This resulted in my rather quickly discovering that 1 of the right-set teeth had somehow been knocked out of alignment and was protruding too far to the right. I managed to coax it back into satisfactory alignment with a needle-nosed vise grip. It now cuts beautifully on either side of the blade. Thanks, again!
What kind of blade us it that you can bend a tooth with pliers?
It's a Diablo D1080T
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