John,

One, for sawing small logs I found that a sled generally works better.
I use a piece of sacrificial plywood, screw the log to the plywood,
and run the plywood up against the saw's fence.

Yep, that's basically the technique I have used too. But I run into
problems if the fence doesn't match the blade drift.

If the blade is bowing despite the tension setting that suggests
that the feed rate is too fast for the saw and blade.

Perhaps, but I do have bowing issues when cutting freehand. I only
encounter the bowing when using the fence. The saw isn't slowing or bogging
down while cutting, at least until the bow gets too severe binding the
blade in the workpiece.

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com