Hi all.
I joined the forum a couple of years ago, when I bought a Craftsman version of the BT3K saw at a garage sale, in excellent shape. I introduced myself then as a guy with an interest in wood, but since my 4 years of wood shop in high school, I have only dreamed of having a working wood shop of my own -- without the money or space to follow through.
As a result, I have had very little table saw use in 25 years, but I'm involved with a project in my home (building a theater room) which will require some trim carpentry, and decided that it was therefore time to buy a table saw. I did this two years ago (bought my Craftsman saw), found this forum, and began to dig into how to use it. HOWEVER -- my project stalled, and thus have not yet used the saw.
Fast forward to today, and I'm ready to start the trim carpentry on my theater room, and finish this project. So, I'm back to trying to "crash course" myself on getting up to speed in terms of being able to utilize this saw in (at least for now) a very basic way -- just some rips of 3/4" oak boards, and cutting some small pieces of 1/4" to 3/4" plywood and MDF.
NOW -- here's the issue (sorry for the long-windedness!) Back around the time I bought the saw, and was reading the forum, I recall this being a somewhat unique saw in terms of squaring up the fence to the blade. Not sure if the prior owner had done it properly (the saw appears to be nearly un-used), I ran a piece of 3/4" oak through the saw, and I found it VERY VERY tough to run the board through and make the rip cut. It almost acted as though the blade was dull or something (it is not -- it's nearly new). I had to push with alot of force to get the board to glide along the fence, once it encountered the blade and the cutting began. It made the cut, but only with considerable effort on my part to push the board through.
Clearly, there was something not right, at this point, and I assumed the solution was that I would need to do the "blade/fence" alignment. But then, as I said, my project stalled, and I never got it to the trim carpentry stage, so never followed through with solving this issue.
Now that I am back at it and ready to trim the room, is it fair for me to assume that this is, indeed, just a matter of aligning the blade and fence? If so, I think I recall the instructions for the saw detailing how to do this, but wanted to make sure that there isn't some other issue with the saw that I might need to address. From the information I have provided, is there enough for you to go on, to help me "diagnose" this issue -- and confirm that this is likely just an "alignment" issue?
Thanks in advance -- for any help, and for your patience with this long-winded table saw "novice!"
Steve
I joined the forum a couple of years ago, when I bought a Craftsman version of the BT3K saw at a garage sale, in excellent shape. I introduced myself then as a guy with an interest in wood, but since my 4 years of wood shop in high school, I have only dreamed of having a working wood shop of my own -- without the money or space to follow through.
As a result, I have had very little table saw use in 25 years, but I'm involved with a project in my home (building a theater room) which will require some trim carpentry, and decided that it was therefore time to buy a table saw. I did this two years ago (bought my Craftsman saw), found this forum, and began to dig into how to use it. HOWEVER -- my project stalled, and thus have not yet used the saw.
Fast forward to today, and I'm ready to start the trim carpentry on my theater room, and finish this project. So, I'm back to trying to "crash course" myself on getting up to speed in terms of being able to utilize this saw in (at least for now) a very basic way -- just some rips of 3/4" oak boards, and cutting some small pieces of 1/4" to 3/4" plywood and MDF.
NOW -- here's the issue (sorry for the long-windedness!) Back around the time I bought the saw, and was reading the forum, I recall this being a somewhat unique saw in terms of squaring up the fence to the blade. Not sure if the prior owner had done it properly (the saw appears to be nearly un-used), I ran a piece of 3/4" oak through the saw, and I found it VERY VERY tough to run the board through and make the rip cut. It almost acted as though the blade was dull or something (it is not -- it's nearly new). I had to push with alot of force to get the board to glide along the fence, once it encountered the blade and the cutting began. It made the cut, but only with considerable effort on my part to push the board through.
Clearly, there was something not right, at this point, and I assumed the solution was that I would need to do the "blade/fence" alignment. But then, as I said, my project stalled, and I never got it to the trim carpentry stage, so never followed through with solving this issue.
Now that I am back at it and ready to trim the room, is it fair for me to assume that this is, indeed, just a matter of aligning the blade and fence? If so, I think I recall the instructions for the saw detailing how to do this, but wanted to make sure that there isn't some other issue with the saw that I might need to address. From the information I have provided, is there enough for you to go on, to help me "diagnose" this issue -- and confirm that this is likely just an "alignment" issue?
Thanks in advance -- for any help, and for your patience with this long-winded table saw "novice!"
Steve
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