Miter cuts?

[a1gutterman]

Hi Navycop,

I am not sure that I understand exactly what the problem is. Are you saying that because of the table tilt, your base board is hitting the saw preventing you from making your cut? If so, you should be able to turn the board so that the leading edge that you are cutting is the bottem of the base board rather then the top, or vice-versa, which ever the case may be. Or am I not visuallizing the cut that you are making right? It is a mitered cross-cut is it not? If your cut is in the center of the board and either end hits the saw regardless of how you turn it, you could cross-cut the board with no miter and then tilt the table to get the right angle.

Am I all messed up or does this make sense?

[Bruce]

I am trying to cut base board that is 6" wide x 6' long. This exceeds the depth of cut at 90 degrees and the board is too long for table tilt. How can I solve this problem?

1) A bandsaw using a miter guage or jig and outfeed support.
2) Some kind of home-made miter jig and a handsaw. Yuck!
3) A sliding compound miter saw. Or a 12" CMS may do it without sliding, I'm not sure.
4) A traditional table saw where the blade tilts.

Those are 4 ways I can think of. I'm sure there's more.

[Ed in Tampa]

I am trying to cut base board that is 6" wide x 6' long. This exceeds the depth of cut at 90 degrees and the board is too long for table tilt. How can I solve this problem?

Navycop
You have hit one of the limitations of the SS. If your cutting a bevel on the SS the board must be short enough that it doesn't hit the floor.

I have heard of guys blocking up the tailstock end of the SS to gain extra inches but sooner or later your going to hit a length you simply can't cut on the SS with tilting table.

Since you can't cut it on the SS you must think of alternatives. I have a Radial Arm Saw which will easily do it. I also have a powered miter saw that tilts to cut bevels that is another way. You could crosscut the board and then cut the bevel using a chamfer bit in a router, or with a circular saw. You could hand plane a bevel on the board, it would take almost no time and after you finish you will have a real sense of accomplishment. Since you would be planing across grain you should use an adjustable throat plane and clamp a backup boards at each end of the board so you don't have tear out. You could find a buddy that has a tilting arbor saw and make your cuts. You could gather all the wood you need cut this way and go to a local cabinet shop and see if they will tilt their blade (many refuse to ever tilt the blades on production machines) and make the cuts, cost should be very low.

You could as someone suggestted get a tilting arbor tablesaw, or use a bandsaw, or cut it by hand. However there is not good way to cut bevels in extra long boards on a SS.
Ed

[rflaherty]

In addition to batg4's good suggestions, you could use a router table with a fence and a 45 degree chamfer bit. You can put a smooth, accurate 45 degree miter on a board up to 1 1/4" thick, depending on the size of the bit. Rockler has them: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2124, but I am sure your local hardware store would have them as well. You would need an outboard support if the board were longer than the table edge. As far as I am concerned, this is THE way to make miters for boxes. You can even get router bits for 6- and 8-sided boxes.

Best wishes,
Bob

[Bruce]

Good idea, Bob. I don't have a router table, so I hadn't thought of that one. However, I am in the process of building a router table as I just bought a P-C router. I can't wait to give it a whirl.

In addition to batg4's good suggestions, you could use a router table with a fence and a 45 degree chamfer bit. You can put a smooth, accurate 45 degree miter on a board up to 1 1/4" thick, depending on the size of the bit. Rockler has them: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2124, but I am sure your local hardware store would have them as well. You would need an outboard support if the board were longer than the table edge. As far as I am concerned, this is THE way to make miters for boxes. You can even get router bits for 6- and 8-sided boxes.

Best wishes,
Bob

[hfmann]

All great ideas guys. Thanks.

Turns out my fear was ill founded about leverage of the extension table preventing the table from staying at true 45 degree. The SS table has hard stops at that angle, so it can't physically move once those are aligned precisely. So that concern disappeared.

My objective was to cut multiple boards to the same precise lengths with 45 degree bevels one each end. I needed a way to put a stop block in place. Here'e some pix showing how I'm now performing this cut. The current solution was to use the sliding table and clamping a stop block in place.

Here's some pix of that setup.

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And this is seems to work well for the length of the boards I'm working with. However, on short boards this setup doesn't work so well. The blade wants to push the board out of square with the fence. I think I'm going to build a sliding crosscut sled that I'll use just for these beveled cuts.

I saw a crosscut sled design that has replaceable inserts at the blade; one insert for zero clearance on a normal 1/8" kerf blade, others for various size dado configurations. I'll just add one for beveled setups.

Thanks for all the ideas.
Hal