Hi everyone:
First, I'm going to work on the baby crib project for my 5-month old son
tomorrow, which entails many compound miter cuts for the splayed legs,
angled arm support stiles, and angled back support slats. I wanted to
ensure that my table saw was in perfect tune, so I decided to bring out the
'ol TS-Aligner Jr. and have at it. This was also, in part, inspired by the
thread somewhere in here the last couple of days about what table saw
alignment tool was the best.
At any rate, it has been almost a year since I tuned the table saw. In that
time I've made a LOT of projects, and haven't really seen any sign that the
saw was out of tune, but I've generally stuck to ninety degrees for the most
part. I have tweaked the fence/blade parallelism a few times (btw. I have a
right-tilt Unisaw with a Biesemeyer 50" fence). I'm delighted to report
that the blade runout was still approx. 0.001", the blade/miter slot
paralellism was approx. 0.001-0.002" and the fence was -0.003" out of
parallel with the miter slot at the back (as intended). I also tuned up my
miter gauges, both of which were dead on perfect (JDS Accumiter and Incra
V-27, newly acquired). I also checked the blade for square to the table (it
was, within 0.002"), and the fence for squareness to the table (a little
worse here, at about 0.004").
Other than having to clean the table of some light rust (hadn't been in the
shop for about 2.5 weeks), the whole operation took me about 20 minutes.
And part of that was remembering how to calibrate the zero point with TS
Aligner.
I'm still giddy about having a Unisaw :-) and now I REALLY see what the
$1700 is for - not having to worry about the saw "moving" in use and over
time.
Sigh.....
Mike
Another nice thing about a Uni (at least mine) is the precision of the
miter slots. I wanted to make some crosscut sleds, and being a diemaker
with access to a machine shop, I thought making the runners out of
steel would be a good idea. Each of my slots are exactly (checked with
gauge blocks) .752 wide and parallel within .001 to each other. All I
did was to use .750x .375 flat ground stock for the runners and they fit
perfectly without binding. Just for kicks, I brought a .750 gauge block
to the WW show when it came around and checked some of the other brands.
The Delta was the best of the bunch. Not the sole reason to buy a
Uni, but it helps. Mark
Mike in Mystic wrote:
> Hi everyone:
>
> First, I'm going to work on the baby crib project for my 5-month old son
> tomorrow, which entails many compound miter cuts for the splayed legs,
> angled arm support stiles, and angled back support slats. I wanted to
> ensure that my table saw was in perfect tune, so I decided to bring out the
> 'ol TS-Aligner Jr. and have at it. This was also, in part, inspired by the
> thread somewhere in here the last couple of days about what table saw
> alignment tool was the best.
>
> At any rate, it has been almost a year since I tuned the table saw. In that
> time I've made a LOT of projects, and haven't really seen any sign that the
> saw was out of tune, but I've generally stuck to ninety degrees for the most
> part. I have tweaked the fence/blade parallelism a few times (btw. I have a
> right-tilt Unisaw with a Biesemeyer 50" fence). I'm delighted to report
> that the blade runout was still approx. 0.001", the blade/miter slot
> paralellism was approx. 0.001-0.002" and the fence was -0.003" out of
> parallel with the miter slot at the back (as intended). I also tuned up my
> miter gauges, both of which were dead on perfect (JDS Accumiter and Incra
> V-27, newly acquired). I also checked the blade for square to the table (it
> was, within 0.002"), and the fence for squareness to the table (a little
> worse here, at about 0.004").
>
> Other than having to clean the table of some light rust (hadn't been in the
> shop for about 2.5 weeks), the whole operation took me about 20 minutes.
> And part of that was remembering how to calibrate the zero point with TS
> Aligner.
>
> I'm still giddy about having a Unisaw :-) and now I REALLY see what the
> $1700 is for - not having to worry about the saw "moving" in use and over
> time.
>
> Sigh.....
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>