All Replies on Saw stop issue with material drift

Have you checked your saw blade?

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

my old craftsman table saw does that as well…..I’ve always wondered why! I’ll be watching – hopefully you (we) can get some answers!

-- Hey you dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood!!!!

The source is either misalignment of your saw or tension in
your wood stock. Your blade may be heeling. Your riving
knife may be off. The face of your fence may be curved.
Your reference edge may be bowed. Your fence may be
deflecting. Your assessment of fence parallelism may be
inaccurate.

Very good possibility the riving knife is misaligned, pulling the stock away from the fence … one possibility (that I don’t necessarily recommend) would be to make a few test cuts with the riving knife removed.

Another (less likely) possibility would be a warped/bent fence.

-- - dabbling in sarcasm is foolish … if you’re not proficient at it, you end up looking stupid … ... ...

I would think if the riving knife was off, you couldn’t get the wood past it. I would check your stock. It sounds like tension wood.

-- Bob www.bobkloes.com

The riving knife is off.

-- If the old masters had power tools, they would have used them. So get off your damn High Horse.

+2 on the riving knife not aligned

-- Crashn - the only thing I make more of than sawdust is mistakes

I have a PCS too. I had the same issue too when I started out.
I’m going to venture a guess that you have too much pressure on the feather board and that always causes the workpiece to want to drift away from the fence.

Read Lorens post again, the answer is there.

It could be anything Loren mentioned. But a couple of test cute without the riving knife could quickly determine whether or not the the problem is there. That’s the first thing I would try.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Sounds like the riving knife to me too.Check with a series of cuts aligning the riving knife laterally each way.If it gets worse move it back more, til it cuts perfect.Alistair

-- excuse my typing as I have a form of parkinsons disease

Have a SawStop PCS too but have not had that problem. Do you get different results if you use the splitter/blade guard instead of the riving knife?

-- John Little, ToyMakers of East Lake

Where do you position the push stick? Loren’s suggestions can all cause this problem, but it’s also possible that you’re “steering” workpiece away from the fence because of where you’re positioning the push stick. Ideally, the push force should be directly in line with the blade. When it isn’t, you can introduce a bit of lateral force which wants to “steer” the workpiece. The further your force is “off-line” the more pronounced the lateral force.

-- Adversity doesn't build character...................it reveals it.

You have to approach this systematically. Test each theory until you find the culprit.

First raise your blade and move your fence to it so its just a paper’s thickness away from the sides of the teeth and lock down the fence. Is the gap the same all around? Is the riving knife touching the fence (it shouldn’t be). Repeat this on the other side of the blade.

If that’s not an issue, put a straight edge against the fence and look for gaps. If you see gaps, slide the straight edge back and forth and see if the gap moves w/ the straight edge (ie curved straight edge) or with the fence (ie curved fence).

Still not it? Then take a wide board (make sure its straight by sliding it against the fence as in the prev step) and without the riving knife, without the featherboard, try nibbling off one edge with a push block like this: http://www.woodsmithshop.com/download/313/313-pushblock.pdf
I try to position my push block closer to the blade than to the fence. That helps to counteract the resistance that the blade makes which will try to make the workpiece drift away from the fence.

Is it curved? If not, then try adding in the riving knife and repeat the last step.

Still not curved, try adding the featherboard.

Thank you all for your response. I am guessing it is the splitter and will take a look tonight. I will get back to you with my findings.

-- Will work for wood...

Ok so I made some adjustments to the splitter and it looks like that solved the problem. It also helped remove burm marks. The splitter wander parallel to the blade causing the material to push itself away from the fence as soon as it hit the end of the splitter which was actually outside of the blade kerf. Thank you all for the suggestions.

-- Will work for wood...

glad to hear you got it solved!

-- Crashn - the only thing I make more of than sawdust is mistakes

I have heard about this sort of thing quite a bit. People always check the leading edge of their splitter/riving knife but ther rear edge can be angled away or towards the fence and cause issues. Glad you found it and hopefully others can benefit from your search. I learn a bunch from hearing how others solve problems.

-- Tom Hintz, www.newwoodworker.com