Checking your set-ups

[Mike G]

I am about to start some actual real joinery.......you know...straight bits of wood and gnat's do-da tolerances. So I thought I should just check the set up on the machines which will be doing the bulk of the work: radial arm circular saw, bandsaw, and planer/ thicknesser.

The radial arm saw was out, considerable, in all 3 controllable directions: it didn't have a vertical blade, the blade didn't track parallel to the arm, and it didn't cut at right angles to the fence. Those are all relatively straight forward adjustments.......say a quarter of an hour.

The bandsaw needed a blade change anyway, so got a good clean out and re-adjustment, including setting up for the new blade.. However, I discovered that the table was no longer at right angles to the blade, and faffed around for quarter of an hour trying to get it right. It is the worst aspect of the design of the saw: tightening up the adjusting knobs pulls the table out of position. Anyway, I got there eventually.

I had suspected for a while now that the infeed and the outfeed table of my planer weren't exactly parallel. A quick look with a straight-edge confirmed my suspicions. I had both off, and cleaned and lubricated everything, put it back together, and it was still substantially out. I mean, getting on for 2mm in 500....so relatively miles out of true. I took both tables off again, exploring for a place to shim things, and decided the outfeed table was the best bet. In taking the bits apart where I intended placing a shim, a really fine shim fell out. So, I was in the right place! Without any shim material, I raided the kitchen cupboard for a tin of baked beans, washed it up then cut it into bits and got some nice flat pieces, which once correctly located, raised the outside end of the table exactly the right amount. :eusa-dance:

The old blades were knackered (I'd always planned to change them as I went from green timber to the finer woodwork), but on the Startrite Inca it is quite a faff getting the adjustment right.

All in all, that was a good lesson in how to get rid of three hours in the workshop. The thing is, the radial arm saw and the bandsaw were both adjusted within the last 6 months or so, and the RAS probably within the last 3 months. The lesson is..........check you machines before you start your next project BEFORE you push the first piece of wood through them.

 

[Alex161]

So, by now the new joinery would have been progressed. How did it go?

It pays to spend time adjusting your equipment for best performance and when it comes to the bandsaw, that is the machine I use most of all for making the bandsaw boxes.

I spent a great deal of time learning how to tune up a bandsaw to get the best performance from it and over time, have come to respect the guidance of these two guys .....

THE BEST FROM A BANDSAW 'Alex Snodgrass of Carter Induistries has an excellent video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbZqWac0jU on a tune up method that works well, but if you want to get the best use of your bandsaw on an ongoing basis, then the Steve Maskery DVD's will show you far more and they are a real investment. http://www.workshopessentials.com/shop/ '.

Hope this helps some of you out there.

Alex

 

[RogerS]

In my experience the relationship between cutter block and outfeed table is THE key aspect to get right on a planer.

Feeler gauges make great shims.

If setting up the blades on your planer are a bit of a faff then consider investing in a Barke Turnblade system (see Doug at Cutting Solutions). Once set up you never need to reset your planer blades again.

Some machines are just bad and will go out of alignment at the drop of a hat.