How To Tune Up Your Mitersaw - WOOD magazine

[Music] [Music] the miter saw is one of those make-or-break tools in the shop aside from the finishing on a project it's the miters that draw the critical eye and actually separate the woodworker craftsmen from the hacker let me show you some techniques to set this off to operate as it was designed and make those might or something you'll envy now miters are made for cross cutting which means cutting a wood across the center and they excel at cutting 90 degrees at bevels which is on the back side of this and miters on the front and their capacity is mainly built around the type of saw and the size of the blade that you've got this is the plunge saw simple plunge saw so the capacity of saw is just a little bit less than diameter of the blade if this were a slide miter you would measure the length of that slide to determine its capacity there now because this saw is not made for ripping only for cross cutting the blade that you use can have a much greater tooth count and much narrower space between the gullets in this case now this is a 12 inch saw blade there are 80 teeth here and you could go up to as many as a hundred depending upon the manufacturer the more teeth equates to a cleaner cut and you'll also find on a miter saw blade as opposed to a table saw blade you want a negative hook angle in other words on a line from the center of the blade that tooth angle would be slightly behind that line it provides a slightly less grab when you're cutting and provides for a much more downward cut leaving a cleaner cut when you're done with it the first adjustment we're gonna make to this saw is making sure that the blade is 90 degrees to the table so on this particular soft lock down the blade I'll set a small little machinist square up against the blade body I don't want to touch the teeth here I just want to touch the blade body in this case the square lines up nicely and shows that the blade is at 90 degrees if I were making adjustments on the back of this particular saw as a hand wheel it will loosen that bevel it'll allow me to set that blade at 90 degrees we lock that bevel and then set the stop which is on the post on the backside here to 90 degrees and as always we would back it off of that stop then push it back but I've got one more test to show you more visual way of cutting a piece of wood and laying those cut ends back together to show you whether or not what you've set is a perfect 9 now I've got this piece of 1x3 stock what I'm going to do is just stand up in the back here cut straight through that ninety degree cut and flip those pieces and friend to see how well that cut line lined up and you should see a really nice match because this is set at 90 degrees okay you know here's our boards as they were cut we'll flip them in for end and put those pieces back together and we have a very pretty straight cut now that we've established the 90 degree cut it's time to check the 45-degree angles this particular one swings both ways so we're gonna check them on the left and just show you how that would work on the right also so I'm gonna lock down the miter like I did before loosen the knob in the back and swing this to the stop that's already set at 45 make sure that stop is operating correctly got the top to my combination square it's gonna slide that in and check it see how it fits up against the blade you'll notice in there that it fits actually pretty well so this again shows that the miter has been set for 45 if the miter did not show that well if it had an opening at the top at the bottom the adjustments are made in the back of the saw there's a couple of hex head bolts on the back that are adjusted in or out to allow that mitre to lay down a little bit more or stand up a little bit more on the left side miter the whole process is is reversed when you come to do the right side so that's the setup there what I want to do now is show you since it is setup another way to use a couple of pieces of wood to show how well the setup that you set on there produces a nice square picture frame let's say now with the saw set at 45 I'm gonna use these four pieces of stock to determine whether or not this time aid on here are correct and they're all the same width which is important they could be any length I'm gonna cut the 45 bevel on each of the four sides flip them around and put a stop block on and recut those and then we'll put those together to resemble a deep picture frame in effect and see how well those mitre is turned out so let's get started [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now that all these are cut I'm gonna lay them out and let's just see what they look like a little bit of tape around them there's the tell-tale piece of tape and these double cuts are all but perfect so there's really no reason to go back and adjust him I think anybody would be happy with the looks of those now the next step in the adjustment is making sure that the blade is 90 degrees to the fence and doing that I'll just lock down the blade and use a plastic triangle now we want the plastic triangle to touch the blade body not the blade teeth that would throw it off so we'll set it up against the fence on the back side and slide it up and see how it aligns to that blade body as it runs down its length and again here the adjustment is pretty good if it were off there's a couple of things that you can do and it depends on the type of saw that you have in some cases the fence is fixed there's no way to adjust the fence so the way to make those adjustments and that's the case on this saw is that underneath this miter gauge there are three bolt heads loosening those bolt heads and adjusting the stop so that it's sitting at 90 and locking it into that spot if I want to make sure that the blade is parallel of the fence in this case I would actually move the blade back and forth to line up with the edge of the square once I've gotten that and I would retighten those bolts and in effect what I've done that has moved the miter gauge slide to make that adjustment now in a second type of saw it's the fence that's actually adjusted to the blade in those cases what you'll do is loosen the four bolts there's normally four or two on either side of that fence and using the same plastic triangle up against the blade body we're gonna align the fence this time to match up with that triangle once you've got it then you're retightening those bolts now that's in a one-piece fence some saws come with a two-piece fence so each one of those adjusting it I normally to make a little bit easier we'll take a to buy material or one by material clamp into those fences or not I've set them in effect is a one-piece fence and use the same alignment system I would have done with one once those are adjusted and once your alignment is set at 90 degrees all the rest of the detents fall in line because they have to they're all machine that way so once the zero is in line the 22 and a half and the 45 are automatically in line I want to show you a way to test both the 90 degree and or the zero and the 45s neither end with a set of blocks so we're gonna show you how to cut those and match those pieces up that will test whether or not the setups that you've made on here are accurate now to test the 90 degree I've got a small piece of one by material here edges are parallel and I'm gonna cut it in half and then flip those and firend and you'll see that that cut lines up so now if I take these two pieces this is how they were cut and flip them in friend I should get and I do a nice clean gap-free line which means that that mitre is set perfectly at zero or ninety now the second part of this test is the test two forty five and again once the nineties been set the 45 is at either end are fixed there's no way to change those anyway so I just want to make sure that they do line up so I'm going to slide the miter gauge over to 45 and I'm going to cut each one of these pieces then I'll put a stop block in cut the other side will make an effect that big broad picture frame and see how well Lowe's miters line up [Applause] oh and that looks really good too so these are really nice miter cuts looks like our 45 is right on the money no reason to go back and check that now our miter is laid out beautifully but let's just say you've done a project this is kind of a little quick tip here you've done a project where the miters didn't work out quite well enough either the tips were touching or the heels or touching so in other words it's open at the top or open at the bottom a lot of woodworkers will try and override the d-10 so the positive stops in here and move that light or just a half a degree or quarter degree each way to to make up for that difference and it's kind of a guessing game I have a much better way to do that it works every time and I'll show you how easy that can be to take off just a little bit of the tip or a little bit of the heel without making major adjustments to the miter gauge itself so here's how this works the idea here is that we're going to use the blade body I'm gonna pull the saw down and use the blade body itself as a stop so I'm gonna slide this piece of material up until it just touches the blade body if I want to take off more of the toe the front of this miter then the heel just take a business card or a playing card and put it behind the front edge of this material in effect what it's done is it's moved this material away from the fence and exposed a little bit more of the point or the toe into that cut before the heel if I want to take more of the heel than the toe off I move this car to the back side which kicks out the back end moving a little bit more of the heel to that cut as opposed to the toe so sometimes is easier to show and explain so what I want to do is first we'll put a pencil mark on here like this you can kind of see that I'm going to take off this material and in this case I want to take off a little bit more of a toll front part of this cut than the heel so I'm going to slip the business card in the front because I want to take off more of the toe than the heel I'm going to slide that piece of material up until it touches the blade body no real pressure on it now pick up the blade and recut now what you can see here is that I've removed the pencil mark or a lot of it and the pencil mark is less on the toll it is unhealed which means I've taken off a little bit more of the toll than the heel without having to move the miter gauge at all sometimes when you move the miter gauge you'll kind of tweak it a little bit a half a degree one way or the other you'll lock it down and then you'll forget that you did it so when you go to cut your next mitre now you've made it worse the opposite direction so leave this where it is lock it in and use the blade and a business card to do that trimming works every time well it may seem like a small thing but it's kind of important to me when you're cutting off a long piece of material you may find that that material begins to tip at the end of this relatively short bed so you're putting an inordinate amount of hand pressure relatively close to the blade while you're making that cut I think in those cases it's a good idea to have some kind of support something a little bit longer to give that wood some way to balance on this table in this case we've got a stand that's got some roller supports on it now you can put your own rollers in you can even build your own a little 2x4 frame if you've got it on a work bench but these adjustments are fairly easy you can see this tips fairly easily now all I'll do is raise the support so at the bottom edge of that board to support it evenly along the table and there we are right there so that now as I run this piece of material that's running over the roller support at the same time it's a great way to balance them again you can get these as aftermarkets some saws come with them or you can build your own but I think it's important to use them now you may have noticed a little bit earlier that I was using stop blocks to control those mitered pieces and make sure that the lengths were all the same I really like to use them I find I'm using them all the time I know that most woodworkers annnnnd and I'm guilty of that too will occasionally use a pencil on the base to decide where you're gonna put these but after a while the base is filled with them and sometimes looking down in that line can change the dimensions of the material especially if you're cutting a lot of them the only thing I would add when using a stop block is to set it just a little bit above the base of the table this allows for any possible sawdust to push away from that rather than accumulate in front now as an alternative that you can taper or champ for the edges of this that does the same thing but that will really help when you're setting up your stop blocks and using them to make sure that nothing interferes with getting perfect cuts every time in addition to stop blocks their whole downs this particular one comes with the saw not all saws have them some saws have them available as an aftermarket purchase if you can find those or if your saw comes with them I would suggest that to use them and the reason is when you're cutting miters in particular I find that a lot of miters have a tendency to creep into the blade as the blade cuts it it seems to pull that miter a little bit closer and if you multiply that creep by eight the number of times you cut 45 it's a lot of times while your picture frames don't turn out well so here if I put them in the correct spot and I used my hold down to hold that firmly there will be no creep when I'm doing it and on smaller pieces it keeps my hand away from the blade so stop blocks and hold downs are two things I would think about again I think that they're a good addition to your saw and a good addition to what you normally consider good practice when you're working with miters now cutting large pieces of trim and stock and a miter saw is generally not much of a problem so when you cut very small stock that you get into a little bit of trouble remember the rotation this blade is going back and without support on the back of that cut a lot of times the pieces that you cut are going to just kind of be blown out of there and cutting small pieces to can be somewhat problematic I want to show you a little technique that will kind of take care of those problems and it's relatively easy to do this is a piece of MDF a little quarter inch piece you could do it with hard boards you can do with a thin piece of plywood I'm going to use some double stick tape and actually tape it to the fence supports on the backside of this once I've cut through the saw blade first time I will have a nice kerf line in here which establishes as in effect a zero clearance for cutting really small pieces and really fine trim on the end of any stock keep the blowout from happening so first we'll take a couple of pieces of double stick tape and we'll have fix it and then I'll show you how that works okay so now I've got a really nice clean line there so I know exactly where that blade is gonna go on both the left and right side and to provide some support for a fairly small piece like this that would normally splinter like crazy when I cut it you'll see how clean those cuts come out when it's backed up by something normally that little piece would come flying out of the back of the saw it was stopped really effectively here by that small little piece of material on the fence and the cut on the back is perfectly clean and there's no blowout on either sides that's a really nice cut makes a really nice miter or straight cut you won't have to worry about split out or chip out at all now as long as we've got this set up here let's just say you're making a clock and you've got these small little trim pieces to cut the smaller they are the closer your hand is going to be to that blade and the concern of course is with hurting yourself for one in getting that cut in line for two I'll take a little piece of material like this and use double stick tape on the piece I'm planning on cutting and lay it in line with the back of that small slip piece and now I can move that anywhere on the cut line and make sure that I'm getting exactly the right cut without worrying about the pieces chipping away and my hand being too close it's a perfect way to cut really small pieces it works every time and the cut will be nice and clean now we talked about all the settings on the saw the 90s and the 45s and the 22 and a half and the thirty are all parts of the saw but there's a couple of markings that you may have seen on I saw that you wonder what they were there for on the miter gauge in particular either a straight line or maybe a little asterisks or a star or a diamond next to 31.6 both on the left hand side and the right side of this mitre and if you look a little closer on the bevel post on the back there is also a diamond or a little mark and those are a 33.9 we wonder what those are for they're actually setups for doing crown molding now you may have seen in the books that you've gotten or maybe even the manuals that came with your saw how to stand up crown molding and cut it in what they call upside down and backwards but your saw actually has all the fittings it needs and all the settings it needs to cut crown molding safely bigger pieces on the flat and that's what those are for here's what crown molding looks like this would be an outside corner on your wall pretty nice-looking piece of trim what it's interesting about crown molding is it doesn't sit at a 45 away from the wall sits at a slightly different angle and this is the angle called a spring angle at the bottom the problem is if you try and cut that on your saw with the miter set at 45 the resulting angle is going to be splayed so by using the D tensor offsets on your saw at 33 9 on the bevel and 31 6 here you can make these cuts that provide a beautiful compound miter set at a perfect 90 when you're done with it here's how that works what I want to do first is I'll set the bevel angle that's the one on the back to 33.9 and there is a mark on the back of that saw there's also in this particular case a small little offset or a stop in the back to hold it there and then on the miter gauge we have a stop at thirty one six on the left and 31 six on the right if I want to cut what I would consider the left outside piece of crown I'm looking at it I set the miter off to the right of thirty one point six make sure that we're set at thirty three point nine on the bevel and this would be the cut the saw would make so laying it flat and making that cut makes a perfect cut doing it on the opposite side spin this to thirty one six on this side this piece of trim gets laid up against the fence on this edge the bevel is still the same and here's the miter cut here it's actually pretty simple a little bit of study and a little bit of practice with this and reading through your manual will show you how to use the bevel settings and the mitre settings for crown molding cutting it on the flat it's a great technique to learn and a beautiful finish when you're done [Music]

Channel: WOOD magazine

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Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, tool, technique, review, table, saw, miter, making, make, build, mitersaw, tune, tune-up, fix, adjust, tweak, calibrate, true, accurate, tuneup

Id: GRoMDiFy0Xk

Length: 21min 34sec (1294 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018