On 10/3/2010 8:02 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
It took less than half an hour to diagnose and fix a minor alignment issue
with my table saw. The combination square indicated the blade was parallel
to the miter slow, and the fence was out slightly.

The initial sign of trouble was that the rising teeth would throw up quite
a bit of sawdust. If I stopped pushing the wood through, there would be a
circular "rainbow" left where the blade was.

After adjusting the fence the cuts are much smoother, the rising teeth
aren't throwing up as much sawdust, and there's no more unwanted "rainbow"
effects. The difference is like going from an ok blade to a good one.

Why did I wait so long?

Puckdropper

Yes, it truly makes a big difference having your tools tuned up. I was
away from woodwoorking for many years. Though I had my tools, they were
in storage. Then, with a new house came a new shop.

I began setting up my tools, a PowerMatic table saw among them. I began
alligning it, and took great pains to get the slot parallel to the
blade, and the fence parallel to the slot, and thus to the blade.

A week later, I was ripping a small piece of plywood and the rising
tooth caught the edge closest to the fence and flung the plywood into my
belly. dropping me to the floor. Bruising, but no internals damaged,
luckily.

I say this all to point out that, IMHO, the fence should not be
absolutely parallel to the slot/blade, but should veer away from the
blade by a few thousandths of an inch so as to relieve the possible
binding described above.

ER visits are expensive!

Harvey