Table saw blade - sharpen, clean, or operator error?

Read the literature on Forrest blade website. They take cutting wood very seriously. They recommend blade all the way up for best cut. Wood is not perfect. Often there is some tension in the wood that can cause the wood to bind even if your setup is "perfect."

 

All the pics were of the same boards, they're just standing on edge next to each other in the first couple pics. The burning went thru the entire thickness of the board. They were around a 1/4" wider than I needed, and I managed to dress them up pretty nicely by jointing the edges on my router table.

I guess my current thought is, if I put the fence on the other side of the blade, and the burning still happened on the right side of the blade, then it's definitely a blade and not an alignment problem. I kept a steady feed rate, but it was slow going - since it's a 40T general purpose blade. Maybe the oak through that blade was just too much for my saw to handle. I also have a Freud 20T rip that I'm sure would cut faster, but I didn't want to give up on the Forrest just yet. I'm not sure if the feather board was in the "correct" location - I had it on the infeed side, maybe a little over an inch in front of the blade.

 

Mike, I've never seen that, and my experience tells me otherwise, but I'm willing to try a different approach....again.
An old dog CAN learn new tricks....sometimes. Thanks for the info.
Yep, I almost asked if maybe the wood decided to warp back into the blade, and pinch.
I've seen that a lot, even in kiln dried stuff.
Shawn, sounds like maybe the problem is/was the "slow going". That would explain it burning the whole length. That will also tend to cause some buildup on the blade.

 

By the looks of that board you have some binding going on and it is probably your rip fence not parallel with your blade and its burning at the back of the blade it doesn't take very much at all.
I'm not saying you fence is junk but some fences will never lock down right.
Is your fence actually straight flat and true?
Was the side of the stock That was against the fence straight and True, jointed before hand?

 

I checked everything when I got home. The fence was still in the same position and that was the culprit. It was over 1/16 off front to back. Took it off and after i cleaned the sawdust off the rails it was back to "normal". It will line up straight if you do it right, but its no biesemeyer.

I just missed out on an early PM2000 with 52" rails and 5HP Baldor - just went for $1500 on CL. They were changing to an educational facility and were trading up to a saw stop. I told him his students should be honored to sacrifice a digit to two to a saw like that!

 

You probably need to hold your mouth right when you lock it down to get it right .
That's a good price for a good used PM 2000, I paid 2900 for my PM 66, and it didn't have any wheels

 

I was wondering do you use your guard, Splitter, anti-kickback deal?
I don't, but I had an incident where, when the tension was released in the board it closed up on the back of the blade almost threw it off the saw, so I made a splitter out of a piece of steel.
The splitter keeps the kerf from closing in on the back of the blade and also when lined up right will help hold the stock against the fence back there.
The newer saws are set up for using riving knife which is even better.

 

Yeah there's no guards on it. I wasn't planning on a new TS this year - I was thinking about a jointer or some chainsaw milling stuff. But I had a recent "incident" that sort of has me looking to upgrade to something with a knife. Though it might not have helped in this case. I was using the miter gauge and had a small offcut catch the blade and it kicked it -somewhere- really hard. It was a pointy little piece too. My girlfriend found it in the fluorescent light fixture overhead.

 

You don't necessarily have to buy a new saw, you might be able to buy a splitter for your saw a model or you can make one.
I use the eraser end of a pencil to push those little pieces away from the blade, and if you don't already have one make yourself up a sliding crosscut table, it works good to keep those little pieces are under control while cutting them

 

Here is a simple one , and it's true you don't need 2 bars , (unless your making one 4 ft wide) I only have one on my sleds, I use 3/4X3/8 steel bar stock, but there's a lot of bars you can buy with holes and that are adjustable for a great fit in the slot
http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/39002/build-a-super-precise-tablesaw-crosscut-sled

 

I used a strip of Oak.

 

I upgraded my table saw to a newer model last year for that very reason. The old beast physically worked fine, but my fingers are expensive, and a new saw was cheaper than a trip to the ER would have been.

 

mithesaint,
I like your logic. Now I know EXACTLY what I am going to tell my wife when she asks, " why are you getting that saw?" answer: the new saw is cheaper than a trip to the emergency room.

My two cents on this thread: just shows the need for sharp, clean cutting equipment. Sharp, clean and well maintained equipment is safe equipment.

 

Also I have found over the years of running different TS's, some do not like certain blades. As funny as it sounds, I had one TS that I had to use a certain blade on, every other one cut horribly.

 

Yup. What's the most dangerous knife in the world? The dullest one you own.

 

I am about to rip some boards this morning and I thought of this thread as we were talking about how high to set the blade height. I have always set it well above the thickness of the stock being cut. Here is my reasoning with pics.

This is a pic of the blade set a little over the board thickness. The cutters are being thrown into the end grain at a low angle. I scribed a line from the cutter to show the path.




This next pic is the blade set much higher than the wood thickness. The cutters are coming down at a steeper angle. A scribed line shows the difference. This is what I learned years ago. And when you think of it, a band saw cut is vertical to the stock, even lessening the chance of kickback.

I will admit, I don't like having a lot of blade exposed over the top of the stock, especially when using push sticks on narrow rips. Caution is paramount, and I always stand off to the side out of the path of the blade and stock.




Dado blades are usually set low, so I usually have heavier pressure on top of the board as there is a lot more resistance from cutting at a low angle.

 

Just one other comment. This is how I set my rip fence. I use a small sliding square set to my width and set it for the front leading edge of the blade and the back. I recheck it again after locking the fence. This just works well for me. My saw is not a beauty queen.

 

That is how I set my distance as well off both the front and back of blade- then distance from fence to a mitre slot in the table so I can check both ends of the fence after I partially lock it down (getting fence sq to blade - blade is sq to miter slot)- 1970 PM66 and oem fence ( one these days maybe I will pop for a new fence system as mine is a bit concave in the middle on the left side about .010-.020)