On Mar 25, 3:15 pm, whit3rd wrote:
On Mar 24, 1:36 pm, Jeff B wrote:

Part of my kitchen remodeling involves cutting and mitering really
nice stained 6" wide molding boards...
I have one of those cheap "table saws"

The problem isn't just that it's cheap, it's that
a table saw requires a number of adjustments.
Your saw probably isn't perfect at 90 degrees either.
There are step by step table saw tuneup procedures that
you will have to implement before doing finish
carpentry, and that means... now.

For 45 degree check, saw a scrap (straight) board
at 45, rotate the two pieces to join at 90 degrees, and see if
it matches a (known good) square.

A complete tune checks the blade for wobble, the parallelism
of the blade to the miter slots, the squareness of the miter
fence, the squareness of the rip fence face, the parallelism
of the rip fence to the miter slots, and maybe other things
that your tabletop saw doesn't allow. Feeler gages, or
vernier caliper, or dial gages will help.

It takes me about 15 minutes to adjust my table saw to 45
degrees and get it right, so you'll want to plan a bunch of
your cuts ahead of time and do 'em on a single setup.
Because the cheapo saws vibrate and have plastic
deformation issues, you'll need to adjust, make a test cut
or two, THEN verify the angle after the parts have settled in.
The long settling-in phase is why cast iron is preferred for
saws...

At least, blade and miter slots should be dead parallel.
From that point, set the miter gauge with a decent grade
drafting triangle and a strip of 1 x 2 jammed into the
miter slot. Process takes less than 15 seconds.