Great Adventure, aligning my first Delta saw

[meanroy]

Ok, I bought the Delta I talked about in this thread.

I didn't get a very good deal but it is what it is.

The fence turned out to be twisted and warped but I have that more or less under control. I added an auxiliary fence made from 3/4" birch plywood. It's not Finnish birch but nearly as good. (pretty solid but has a few visible small internal voids)
I ran a double row of 1/4-20 setscrews along the top and bottom of the fence so I could adjust it to exactly 90 deg. to the table and take out the warp. I adjusted the fence to the left miter slot and was able to get it within a few mils. It'll do until I replace it I think. (more on that another time)

It didn't come with a guard or splitter either.



When I checked the blade to miter slot alignment (with a dial indicator) I found it is off by ~ .050. Maybe not quite that good.

I've succeeded in downloading the 34-410 Instruction manual and some additional notes on the adjustment.

Here's a couple of pics of the fence, I'll take some more pics as I go.

and

It appears to be quite a PITA to get at the requisite bolts needed to make the adjustments.

I'm sure there are a lot of more experienced folks than I here who will be glad to give me suggestions.

Roy.


------------------ Preliminary try
OK, I spent a few hours laying on my back under the saw, dribbling sawdust into my eyes and succeeded in bringing it down to ~.010.
Not good enough IMO. Tomorrow I'm going to turn it over and clean and oil everything and try again.
I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find the combination of blade and arbor run out was < .003.
According to the instructions I found, you should make the tie bars parallel first, but I haven't done that yet.
I'll do it before I do the *serious* attempt at alignment.
R.

[meanroy]

Further adventures.

I started the morning by tipping the saw onto a 4X4 support block and firing up the compressor.
After blowing out the sawdust and spider webs, I oiled things up with WD40. (NOT the belt and pulleys ) Finished up by wiping things down, loosening the trunnion bolts slightly, and putting the saw back right side up.

I found a supplement to the procedure for aligning the saw on another site which the poster got from Delta via a fax. It is apparently no longer available from Delta.

The part which is not mentioned in the Delta Manual is making the tie bars parallel before adjusting the trunnions. this was only mentioned in the supplementary pages sent by Delta.

3. Remove the saw blade. (Remember, it is still at it's maximum height)
4. Place a flat plate (or similar flat object) on top of the two tie-bars.
(The size of the plate should be at least 6" by 8", and the flatter the
better). Depress one corner of the plate and if it rocks, the tie-bars are
not parallel. This must be corrected as it will affect the alignment of the
blade.

To make the Tie-Bars parallel:
5. Loosen the tie-bar locknuts (2ea. ref #245) located at the rear of the
saw.
6. Grasp the motor bracket (ref #244) and move it left and/or right. Check
the rocking of the flat plate and when it can no longer rock, the tie-bars
are parallel...re-tighten the locknuts.

I followed the directions and by golly, they weren't parallel and following the procedure fixed that.

I replaced the saw blade and checked it for run out. It wasn't quite as good as it had been so I loosened the blade and rotated it slightly, holding the arbor fixed, and re-checked it. After a few tries I found a fairly sweet spot and tightened the blade lock nut. It's not quite as good as it was before but not too bad, ~.005".

I then set up to measure the blade to miter slot distance. I found that I could fasten the dial indicator directly onto the V27, which is handy.
Getting the trunnions lined up was quite difficult but eventually I got it pretty close. One thing I found was you have to be careful not to loosen the trunnion bolts too far or the undercarriage can slip out of the groove.

It now looks pretty good, after tightening the bolts up it's about 1-1.5 mil.


I'm definitely going to have to do something about the fence next.

I hope not to have to do this again for a while!


Roy.

[cgallery]

A PITA, no doubt, but worth every four letter word you uttered during the process.

It seems the thing that tends to throw the bars out of parallel is people tilting the blade with a zero clearance throat plate installed, or something obstructing the motor's swing. If you avoid doing that, you're home free.

And yeah, you maybe didn't get a smokin' deal on the saw. OTOH, if it is the saw I think it is, you'll get years of trouble-free service. How can you beat that?

[ragswl4]

I then set up to measure the blade to miter slot distance. I found that I could fasten the dial indicator directly onto the V27, which is handy.
.

How did you do that? Neat idea for checking alignment. If possible could you post a pic of the attachment to the V-27? TIA (thanks in advance)

[SARGE..g-47]

I realize it was a PITA but.. once you get this done there will be little about the saw you don't know inside-out... upside down.. etc. If you can re-hab a contractor saw.. you can definitely re-hab a cabinet saw.

Keep up the good work and congratulations on acquiring a better saw than you had.

[meanroy]

How did you do that? Neat idea for checking alignment. If possible could you post a pic of the attachment to the V-27? TIA (thanks in advance)

It worked like this for me because my dial indicator has a 1" range, (measures 0-1") so I didn't have to adjust the distance between the indicator and the blade.
If you have to adjust it you could make a slotted piece to fasten the indicator to.

[ragswl4]

It worked like this for me because my dial indicator has a 1" range, (measures 0-1") so I didn't have to adjust the distance between the indicator and the blade.
If you have to adjust it you could make a slotted piece to fasten the indicator to.

Thanks, that's so simple I feel mentally challenged. Great idea.

[meanroy]

more tuning

I wasn't happy with the vibration after alignment.
It wasn't terrible, but it didn't make me happy.

I aligned the pulleys and installed a Fenner linkbelt and frankly am amazed!
No vibration left, when the saw is turned on it just hums.

I attached a finger joint fixture to the Incra and tried it out.

At that point I found the blade wasn't right. I'm sure you know what I mean, a nice peak in the center of the slot.

Joint looked ok after I filed it flat but there's no way I was going to do that for every joint.

I looked on-line for blades and found it pretty pricey for a good one.
I looked locally at various woodworking places, HD and orchard but found nothing. Then I stopped by a pretty new store which has a weird collection of tools, both foreign (china, Taiwan) and domestic, just on the off chance and found this:

I wasn't terribly impressed but it was only $40, compared to the >$100 price I found on-line. I tried it out and it works great, nice square bottoms and a pretty smooth cut with virtually no tearout.

After I finished playing around making a box out of some clear redwood, which came out pretty well, I moved on to the *real job*, a cherry tray for a music/jewelry box I'm making.
I'll post some pics of the finished tray on the appropriate forum.

Roy.

[SARGE..g-47]

Roy... it appears you are using a single blade for box joints? If that is the case the angle in the corner is created by the ATB grind angle. For future reference.. if you need a blade that will cut a flat bottom.. purchase a 24 T ripping blade and make sure the description is FLAT ground teeth in lieu of ATB grind. Some rip blades do have ATB grind which I don't like on a ripping blade.

The flat tooth as on all my rip blades and on my Frued Box Cutter set (an excellent set BTW) is flat grind which indeed does not leave that angle in the corner of a non through cut as a box joint is.

Good luck and have fun with that saw. Nice job of tuning it up and from the looks of things you may be able to enter a NASCAR race soon driving it.

Regards...

[meanroy]

Yah.

Roy... it appears you are using a single blade for box joints? If that is the case the angle in the corner is created by the ATB grind angle. For future reference.. if you need a blade that will cut a flat bottom.. purchase a 24 T ripping blade and make sure the description is FLAT ground teeth in lieu of ATB grind. Some rip blades do have ATB grind which I don't like on a ripping blade.

The flat tooth as on all my rip blades and on my Frued Box Cutter set (an excellent set BTW) is flat grind which indeed does not leave that angle in the corner of a non through cut as a box joint is.

Good luck and have fun with that saw. Nice job of tuning it up and from the looks of things you may be able to enter a NASCAR race soon driving it.

Regards...

Thanks Sarge.
Good advise, and actually that's what I tried to find. (though I wasn't familiar with the exact terminology)
I looked at all the blades I could find locally and couldn't locate one with flat ground teeth.
I wanted something I could do ~1/8" fingers with.
What the blade pictured has is 1 tooth beveled to the right, followed by a tooth that looks like a little hip roof (pointed in the center), and a third tooth beveled to the left, rather than a flat grind.

It does a nice job on the bottoms and cuts very smoothly.

Roy.

[AlanWS]

It looks like you did a great job tuning up that saw. It should perform well for you. One thing next time that might make it easier: If you clamp the trunnion to the undercarrige to hold the parts together in the curved groove, then you don't need to worry about them coming apart as you align the blade to the miter slot. This avoids any chance of opening up slop in the mechanism.

Do you have a splitter yet? On that saw, the original splitter was attached at two points: one under the insert just behind the blade, and the other on a steel rod sticking out the back of the saw. If you bolt just to the one right behind the blade, it is stable but much quicker to remove and replace. I timed it once when I had that saw, and it took under 30 seconds including plugging the saw back in and hanging up the wrench. My splitters were pieces of steel in different heights so I could swap a short one in for non-through cuts. You can make a tall one with a crown guard, that is a piece of wood on top to keep your hands from coming down on it or the stock from lifting up. If you have an old crummy blade and an angle grinder they are easy to make. These splitters are stronger, and will tilt with the blade, in contrast to those attached to the insert. Incidentally, as long as you don't use that steel rod to anchor your splitter so it does not need to remain precisely aligned, the rod is a very nice handle for making minor tweaks while aligning the blade.

A zero clearance insert (ZCI) is another very useful addition to keep the cut clean on the bottom of your stock, and to prevent small cutoffs from dropping in to jam the blade and cause kickback.

[LCHIEN]

Thanks Sarge.
Good advise, and actually that's what I tried to find. (though I wasn't familiar with the exact terminology)
I looked at all the blades I could find locally and couldn't locate one with flat ground teeth.
I wanted something I could do ~1/8" fingers with.
What the blade pictured has is 1 tooth beveled to the right, followed by a tooth that looks like a little hip roof (pointed in the center), and a third tooth beveled to the left, rather than a flat grind.

It does a nice job on the bottoms and cuts very smoothly.

Roy.

what you describe having is an ATB (Alternate top bevel) with a raker.
What you want is a FTG blade, all teeth flat topped.

Good luck.

P.S. WD-40 is a solvent and anti-corrosion, not a true lubricant. It'll help move around what lubricant there might be but if there aren't any it will evaporate and leave the junction unlubed.

[tlt]

what you describe having is an ATB (Alternate top bevel) with a raker. What you want is a FTG blade, all teeth flat topped.

What FTG blades do you guys use? I've been looking for an inexpensive (< $50) blade for a while now. I thought I was set -- I had ordered a 19T FTG delta blade, but they were out of stock and sent a "Triple Chip" saw blade instead. Looking at the description, it has one flat tooth blade, but it look like the other parts of the triple teeth are not...

[meanroy]

what you describe having is an ATB (Alternate top bevel) with a raker.
What you want is a FTG blade, all teeth flat topped.

Good luck.

P.S. WD-40 is a solvent and anti-corrosion, not a true lubricant. It'll help move around what lubricant there might be but if there aren't any it will evaporate and leave the junction unlubed.

I'm still looking, but haven't had any luck locally. I was just glad to find what I did.
I mostly used the WD40 to clean everything, I need to put some grease in the appropriate locations.

It looks like you did a great job tuning up that saw. It should perform well for you. One thing next time that might make it easier: If you clamp the trunnion to the undercarrige to hold the parts together in the curved groove, then you don't need to worry about them coming apart as you align the blade to the miter slot. This avoids any chance of opening up slop in the mechanism.

Yeah, I had trouble with that, I may go back and re-do it with a clamp in place. I don't know why I didn't think of that.

Do you have a splitter yet? On that saw, the original splitter was attached at two points: one under the insert just behind the blade, and the other on a steel rod sticking out the back of the saw. If you bolt just to the one right behind the blade, it is stable but much quicker to remove and replace. I timed it once when I had that saw, and it took under 30 seconds including plugging the saw back in and hanging up the wrench. My splitters were pieces of steel in different heights so I could swap a short one in for non-through cuts. You can make a tall one with a crown guard, that is a piece of wood on top to keep your hands from coming down on it or the stock from lifting up. If you have an old crummy blade and an angle grinder they are easy to make. These splitters are stronger, and will tilt with the blade, in contrast to those attached to the insert. Incidentally, as long as you don't use that steel rod to anchor your splitter so it does not need to remain precisely aligned, the rod is a very nice handle for making minor tweaks while aligning the blade.

I haven't found a splitter yet, using an old blade sounds like a good idea, I'll have to try that. No guard either, frankly it's a little scary and I'm being as careful as I can!

A zero clearance insert (ZCI) is another very useful addition to keep the cut clean on the bottom of your stock, and to prevent small cutoffs from dropping in to jam the blade and cause kickback.

Next on my list actually. The insert caused me some problems. The allan screws are frozen solid and it's not very even. Maybe that's a good project for this afternoon.

Roy.

---
PS. It never ends does it.

[Knottscott]

Nice job all around, and great idea with the dial indicator on the miter gauge. That Incra is a heck of a good value IMHO. Enjoy!