I've never relied on my miter saw for any cross cut, miter or not that
was part of the design. I cut all parts slightly over sized and do all
cross cuts on the table saw.

I am only speaking of building furniture or any fine work. There is no
way the get the kind of precision and clean cut as you can with a well
tuned table saw and proper cross cutting techniques.

One of the first big lessons for me when building furniture was cut
your parts dead square. If the material is square, the rest is easy. I
usually have a sliding miter as my cut off machine. There is just no
way a heavy motor sliding around on some bars with the inertia forces
and resitance of the cut are going to allow that machine to cut as
accurate as motor in a trunnion having material slide slow past it in
solid cradle (sled).

Howevre, I just snagged a huge cast iron miter trimming knife like
this http://www.lionmitertrimmer.com/ but a little beefier for $20 on
craigs list. So maybe in the near future I'll do miters on the cutoff
saw and clean them up with this if length isn't critical.


On Nov 16, 6:02*pm, BrianSiano wrote:
I'm starting a project where 45-degree miter cuts are essential, so I
decided to tune my Makita saw a little. I've run into some problems.

The biggest is that I cannot align the fence to the saw blade
properly, without removing one of the four screws. Basically, if I use
all four screws, the left side of the fence hasd to pivot forward
further than the screws allow.

I tried to align it without the screws, just to get the placement
right. Turns out that the two sides of the fence align differently. If
I make one side of the fence 90-degrees to the blade, the other is
just a hair off.

So here's what I'm thinking. If I cut the fence in half, then I can
adjust each side so they're both true. I'd like to avoid that. If I
buy a few fence, there's no guarantee that the new one'll work. I
could build a new fence that can adjust properly with some oak scraps,
but it wouldn't be as nice as the metal one that came with the unit.

Are there any third-party fences trhat work with the Makita? Any other
suggestions?