Made firewood this past weekend

Re: Made firewood this past weekend

Lee Schierer in McKean, PA

Ouch. Sorry to hear about your blade. Have you considered attaching a backer piece to the face of your tenon gauge when you are making angled cuts toward the face. You can also flip the board around and angle your tenon cutter. I use my Beall Tilt box to achieve precise angles on mine.

I would replace it with Freud F80 Hyper Finish or a LU73M. Both are excellent blades at a reasonable price.

I would be interested in hearing how you make those really long angled ends on the wider piece of your flag case.

Lee

Sounds frustrating!

John in NM

I'm assuming you didn't complete the cut? Looks like it was a bit of a risky cut to me, could have gotten even more exciting than it did.

I once hit a 1/4-20 cap screw head with a router bit - that made an awful noise! I never replaced that screw in the jig after that (it's job was to spread a plastic, split tenon for work holding) as a reminder to tighten the screw when putting a new piece on the jig

Can't help much with the chop blade. I bought Diablos for years but the most recent was disappointing - too much clearance angle or too thin a plate, so it cuts like a general purpose blade rather than a chop blade.

Miters can be frustrating, especially such acute ones that take a different set up than you're used to using. Not the same as a 45 where you can cut a bit oversize on a chopsaw and then just sneak up on it. I would probably make a purpose built shooting board for that one and sneak up on it with a hand plane.

Re: Made firewood this past weekend

Joe in a Cleveland suburb

Thanks for the reply.

"I use my Beall Tilt box to achieve precise angles on mine."

I use a similar Wixey angle thingy.

"I would replace it with Freud F80 Hyper Finish or a LU73M. Both are excellent blades at a reasonable price."

I'll look into those. I believe I saw the F80 is thin kerf. Does that matter?

"I would be interested in hearing how you make those really long angled ends on the wider piece of your flag case."

I used the same setup. Worked fine the first time. Not sure why I am struggling with this...

Nothing special here....

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I've tested the metal cutting ability of saw blades on a tenoning jig, miter bar and others.

The question is why are you using a cross cut blade for a rip cut?

Freud makes good blades and they are available everywhere.

Re: Sounds frustrating!

Joe in a Cleveland suburb

"I'm assuming you didn't complete the cut? "

No I didn't. I quit.

"Looks like it was a bit of a risky cut to me, could have gotten even more exciting than it did."

Right. That's why I quit. Didn't feel safe. Scared me to be honest. And that adds to the risk I think.

"I would probably make a purpose built shooting board for that one and sneak up on it with a hand plane."

That's it. Shooting board. Couldn't think of the term in my original post.

Re: Nothing special here....

Joe in a Cleveland suburb

"The question is why are you using a cross cut blade for a rip cut?"

I'm confused. It's a crosscut. Isn't it?

I'm cutting across the grain on the thinner strips in the second picture with the blue and green tape.

Re: Made firewood this past weekend

Lee Schierer in McKean, PA

My F80 is full kerf as are all mr Freud blades now.

I found that when I cut tendons that a rip blade actually works better because of the grain direction to the blade.

Lee

Re: Sounds frustrating!

John in NM

Scariest kickback I ever had was the drop from a cut like that, though the drop was outside the piece as I remember. Still don't know what happened exactly, but there were dents in the ceiling and the wall behind the saw. Lucky for me I developed the habit of staying out of the line of the cut as much as I can, so I was standing off to the left.

On that cut, I would expect trouble if the drop got pinched between the blade and the tenon jig, like if it rotated a bit. Yikes!

Shooting boards are great. Easy to make, need not be kept if you don't plan to make another flag case. I've made them out of MDF with a brad nailer before, then tossed when done (or 2 years later after tripping over it six times, but close enough to "when done", right? )

Re: Made firewood this past weekend

William Duffield

There is another pitfall with using thin kerf blades on a left tilt saw. If you use the ruler on the fence rail to the right of the blade for measuring rips or crosscuts, the thickness of the blade plate and the carbide teeth affect that measurement, since the arbor flange is to the left of the blade. (Of course, that's not a problem if you have a sloppy fence and are forced to measure the true distance between the edge of the saw tooth and the fence every time you move the fence. )

Don't trust remote rulers.  Fence to tooth measure

Re: Don't trust remote rulers.  Fence to tooth mea

William Duffield

I suppose it depends a lot on how accurate your fence is, or OTOH on what you are using to measure fence to saw distance.

My fence is stable enough and I've calibrated it well enough that using it is accurate enough for woodworking and a lot faster than getting out a machinist's square and making sure the rule is zeroed to the head. A speed square isn't precise enough, and a tape measure or a ruler without a square head has inaccuracies due to parallax errors. Another problem with using even an accurate square is that it is a lot more difficult to read than the ruler and magnifier that are built into my saw fence.

If I need precision finer than 1/128", I use a shooting board.

I recalibrate the right side position indicator lens on the fence (on my left tilt saw) whenever I change the blade. The left side lens hasn't ever needed to be readjusted.

Re: Don't trust remote rulers.  Fence to tooth mea

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Agree, I have an obsession about tuning all my tools. (Was an Engineer for 40 years). I had a friend come over with a small project, had a board he wanted ripped, around 5" wide. I set my fence to 5" using the scale only, and ripped the board. He questioned the accuracy so I handed him my Mitutoya digital calipers (reads to .0001).

(I got them from work because the inside measurement tip had been damaged slightly and no longer met our ISO standard so were scrapped.)

When he measured the width it was within .002" (plenty good for me.)