Penultimate Contractor Saw tune up method #2: Cleanup and finishing

With the guts removed and on the flat surface

You can detect of the 2 bars are out of alignment by attempting to rock them. This is similar to the Delta method but we rock the bars not a flat piece of wood on the bars.

If they are out of alignment clamp down the bars and loosen the 2 nuts on the rear side.

Once the 2 nuts are loosened, make sure no sawdust is jammed behind them, loosen both clamps then reclamp and double check that the arbor is 90 degrees to the flat surface with a small engineers square.

Once everything is lined up, tighten the heck out of both nuts.

Go back the the saw and clean the front trunnion. Both the U shaped area and the worm gear and the guide surfaces next to the worm gear are the main areas of concern. Get them good and clean and spray them down with a dry lube.

Install your good graded bolts with lock washers.

You’ll notice that the grade 8 1 inch are a tad larger than the originals. This should not be a problem with the lock washer added to the mix. Install new cut washers these are thicker than regular washers and shouldn’t distort (trunnion, cut washer, lockwasher, bolt head)

Loosely install the 2 bolts on the front trunnion. Then reinstall the guts, this takes a little jimmying and watch out for the degree pointer getting jammed up.

Once you have the guts installed in the front trunnion use a clamp to hold it in place, then install the rear trunion and clamp that in place as well.

By keeping everything clamped we can tighten down the bolts to the alignment phase and ensure that we are keeping everything in position, nothing should move after we tighten down the bolts.

Reinstall the motor at this point, alignment without the motor and belt installed is worthless.

Align by whatever your usual means is. I don’t own PALS, or a 100 dollar aligning kit. I simply have a 15 dollar dial indicator shoved into a piece of wood. I get it to about .002ish and that’s good enough.

Be careful when you tighten the trunnions down, the alignment can shift based on the force applied to the bolt head, I mix pulling the wrench with pushing the wrench to minimize the disturbance from this action.

Tighten the heck out of these bolts, my saw will move long before I get to the strip out the cast iron area of torque. While I want to caution you to not strip out the bolt holes, this is the area most people skimp on and is the cause of most alignment difficulties after bevel cuts.

Here is a 45 degree test cut I did after doing this procedure. I only had 1 side jointed so it’s not sitting very well on the table top.

Re check your alignment after setting to 45 degrees. If it moved you didn’t tighten it down enough. I cannot find a torque value recommend by anyone on tightening them. I would love a real number to give someone without ruining my saw to see what the max value is.