Shopsmith Forums

We have had a whole lot of discussion on SS alignment here on the forum.

The consensus, lead by Dusty, is 5 thou (0.005). Well the industry appears to not to agree. Saw Stop blade to spliter and blade to miter track tolerance is 0.010. This is a full up cast iron cabinet saw.

Hey Dusty!

See the video here from Highland Woodworking at about 3 minutes.

http://thehighlandwoodworker.com/the-hi ... pisode-26/

jsburger wrote:We have had a whole lot of discussion on SS alignment here on the forum.

The consensus, lead by Dusty, is 5 thou (0.005). Well the industry appears to not to agree. Saw Stop blade to spliter and blade to miter track tolerance is 0.010. This is a full up cast iron cabinet saw.

Hey Dusty!

See the video here from Highland Woodworking at about 3 minutes.

http://thehighlandwoodworker.com/the-hi ... pisode-26/

Thank you John, as much as I appreciate Dusty's scrutiny on things.
This horse has been ridden hard, put away wet and beaten to death and then beaten back to life a few times.

I will attest to the quality of the Sawstop saw. The woodworking club bought the Professional not the Industrial model. The first test cut was to cross cut a piece of red oak and I could not tell when the saw blade contacted the wood. Just a slight change of pitch from the blade. The blade is the SawStop blade and seems to be a very good quality. Nice clean cuts. Every member who uses this saw says it is probably the best saw that they have used and some of them have been in the woodworking industry as professionals or teachers for 30 years or more. (I live in a retirement community)
We have two false triggers of the brake since we bought the saw in June. One was on July 31 and the other on Aug 31. SawStop has been fantastic in providing technical assistance and replacing parts. Shopsmith may have a rival in the customer service area in the future. Our shop is near Very High voltage power lines ( about 2 feet outside the right of way limit ) and now I am wondering if the utility is using power lines for data distribution once a month. We are now getting to the end of a month so time will tell.
Bill V

ERLover wrote:

jsburger wrote:We have had a whole lot of discussion on SS alignment here on the forum.

The consensus, lead by Dusty, is 5 thou (0.005). Well the industry appears to not to agree. Saw Stop blade to spliter and blade to miter track tolerance is 0.010. This is a full up cast iron cabinet saw.

Hey Dusty!

See the video here from Highland Woodworking at about 3 minutes.

http://thehighlandwoodworker.com/the-hi ... pisode-26/

Thank you John, as much as I appreciate Dusty's scrutiny on things.
This horse has been ridden hard, put away wet and beaten to death and then beaten back to life a few times.

Excuse me, everyone, for being wild and bad , but I just couldn't resist this opportunity to share a bit of management wisdom. The Dakota Indians were, apparently, much wiser than many modern-day managers.

Subject: Dead Horse Strategies

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like: "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horse in today's environment.
10. Changing the requirements, declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hiring contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Doing a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchasing a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declaring the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
18. Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisiting the performance requirements for horses.
20. Saying this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

The number of .005" was provided by Nick. Before this and after this I still go for .003"(which I have no problem doing). I know of several "experts" who believe this is even too much. One that comes to mind is the woodwhisper.

I personally have not attempted to figure this out but I know Nick did. So believe him or not that is up to you but it is not a number that Dusty picked out of the air.

It has to do with the width of the kerf and when the "wood" and the body of the blade comes into contact. If I happen to get some time later tonight I see if I can find Nicks post on the subject.

Ed

BuckeyeDennis wrote:

ERLover wrote:

jsburger wrote:We have had a whole lot of discussion on SS alignment here on the forum.

The consensus, lead by Dusty, is 5 thou (0.005). Well the industry appears to not to agree. Saw Stop blade to spliter and blade to miter track tolerance is 0.010. This is a full up cast iron cabinet saw.

Hey Dusty!

See the video here from Highland Woodworking at about 3 minutes.

http://thehighlandwoodworker.com/the-hi ... pisode-26/

Thank you John, as much as I appreciate Dusty's scrutiny on things.
This horse has been ridden hard, put away wet and beaten to death and then beaten back to life a few times.

Excuse me, everyone, for being wild and bad , but I just couldn't resist this opportunity to share a bit of management wisdom. The Dakota Indians were, apparently, much wiser than many modern-day managers.

Subject: Dead Horse Strategies

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like: "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horse in today's environment.
10. Changing the requirements, declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hiring contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Doing a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchasing a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declaring the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
18. Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisiting the performance requirements for horses.
20. Saying this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

LMAO, my Ex and ex Mother in Law fit into those 21 guid lines and had a few more techniques.

reible wrote:The number of .005" was provided by Nick. Before this and after this I still go for .003"(which I have no problem doing). I know of several "experts" who believe this is even too much. One that comes to mind is the woodwhisper.

I personally have not attempted to figure this out but I know Nick did. So believe him or not that is up to you but it is not a number that Dusty picked out of the air.

It has to do with the width of the kerf and when the "wood" and the body of the blade comes into contact. If I happen to get some time later tonight I see if I can find Nicks post on the subject.

Ed

Ed I never dwelled that deep into that amount of perfection for wood work, with that said, I wonder if all is perfect, and ripping a piece just wood tension could effect it, or if cross cutting, just technique and any wrist twist/movement with a bit of slop in the miter gauge track could effect it by thousands, not to mention anything in the saw arbor/blade.

I don't know where the point of danger come in but at some point the error will be enough for it to be dangerous to use because of it.

Lots of bad things happen when the error gets to some point so I try and stay away from that. Maybe .010 is fine but .011 is not, so you bump something after you get the .010 set and it ends up at .011...... bang kick back! Now if I'm at .003 and I bang it pretty hard I'm still not likely to get to .011. This is called a safety factor.

Now I have a nice thin kerf blade I like, it has a kerf of .097". The body of the blade is say .077" this gives me .020 of none contact. That is .010 on each side of the blade. Now this just happens to be a high quality blade so it runs true and straight with thermal expansion slots and anti vibration slots and made of a good grade of cold rolled steel and laser cut. How ever not everyone here is willing to spend the money for good blade..... blade defection come in to play on a cheap stamped blade, so where or what is the safety factor on such a blade? I don't know and I doubt anyone here does. Lots of factors come into play, can you identity them?

I feel safe at .005 and even better at .003". This has no bearing on how accurate I can and do cut. That is a different ball game. Wood has enough quirks that can make life difficult without having to worry about alignment at all. Even if an accuracy of a project was 1/4" I would still keep the alignment right where I have it. Does this make since to everyone or are you so turned off by this whole thing to not ever care???????

Ed

Ed/reible it was garble to me, but what do I know. I run Freud thin kirf, I never miked them, but sez 3/16 blade tooth, I dont know what the body is but less for sure. I have never done a fence set up other to check blade to fence front and rear with a 1/64th" quality rule and let it run out fat on the back side by a fat 64th.
Miter thing, I bought a Kreg set up back on Amazon days a few months back, snugged up there set screws on the track bar per instruction, checked it to square with the blade, which it was, and just make saw dust.

On this issue I am with the Dakotas.

The table alignment problem given in the Shopsmith owners manual works! It might not make you a better craftsman but if correctly done it will not introduce any error into your work.

In my opinion too many believe the precision of their machines will overcome their careless nature.
I have seen more than a few cuts messed up because the operator failed to clear the saw dust from fence, failed to properly hold the wood, failed to think through what was going to happen at the end of the cut, failed to consider wood grain, failed to consider all the variables before starting a cut.