weak or smart?

What kind of table saw are you using?

I cut my miters on a compound miter saw due to the crappy slot in my Craftsman tablesaw. I like to back up the miter saw with a shooting board and a handplane to make a crisp 45.

-- "there aren’t many hand tools as awe-inspiring as the #8 jointer. I mean, it just reeks of cast iron heft and hubris" - Smitty

I cut very accurate miters on my TS (you can se examples in my projects).
Here are some points I’ve found helpful/key

- make sure (check) miter is TRUELY square with blade
- make sure (check) blade is TRUELY at 45-degrees
- use zero clearance insert
- use backer board attached to miter
- test cut
- make sure each of your opposing sides are TRUELY the exact same length (on many projects it matter a WHOLE lot more that they are teh exact same length than that they are exactly a specific length (i.e. exactly 6”)
- and the truely key point (IMHO) is SNEAK UP on the cut! Make sure your last cut on the miter is less than the full width of your blade – the slighter the better.

-- Shameless - Winner of two Stumpy Nubs Awards

Loren I have a rockwell RK7240.1 10” table saw. chrisstef I just purchased one and am looking forward to getting time in the shop to try it out. DY I don’t have a zero clearance insert, all good advice, problem is I seem to find that my motor is well out of true or moves on me however you would put it. I need to go in and see if I can tighten the mounts, I just noticed it when I tried to put my cross cut sled back on and the blade rubbed one side of the slot.

-- two men walk into a bar the third one ducks, which are you??

+1 to everything DYankee said, I think his last piece of advice is the one I would emphasize. Cut it a tad long, then sneak up on it. A lot easier to take more off than to put some back on.

-- - The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that held its ground.

I think that was part of my problem BinghamtonEd I kept trying to take off small amounts and ended up getting farther and farther in trouble instead of stopping and relaxing. I am still new and sometimes should rethink instead of fixing on the fly.

-- two men walk into a bar the third one ducks, which are you??

Miters are about the trickiest joint to get right.

Most non-cabinet saws will experience blade healing when
the motor is tilted at 45 degrees. The solution is to leave
the blade at 90 degrees and make a jig that holds the
work at 45.

Loren I thought about that and honestly I just knew the table could roll to 45 and wanted to try it out. one of those things that a year or more down the road and I will think it was goofy to try. fortunately or unfortunately I am new enough to woodworking that I get some goofy ideas and don’t realize the impracticality of it or the fact that another process would cut the time and difficulty in half. I am just a woodworking kid trying to become a woodworking adult and having growing pains.

-- two men walk into a bar the third one ducks, which are you??

Poopie, If you have a good saw that is accurate otherwise you can go down to the Office store and buy a couple of Staedtler drafting triangles. Set one up against the blade and resting on the deck… If you are using the 45° angle, your cut will be 45° unless the blade/arbor or motor is drifting.

-- Improvise.... Adapt...... Overcome!

I personally found that the healing Loren mentions is not so much the blade, but rather the board moving ever so slighlly along your miter – this can be a hair towards the blade or a hair away. My fix to this was to use self-adnesive 220 grit sandpaper on the front of my miter fench. This eliminates movement while cutting. The wider the piece being cut the more pronounce this movement can be. If you have a tendency to push teh board towards the blade the cut will get “wider” the longer you are cutting (wide board). If you do this on matching miters you will find the gap in the miter is wider at one end (say the bottom) than at the other. This is made more pronounce because both miter cuts were “widen” at the roughly same rate.

Bottom line – use some sandpaper attached to the front of you miter fence, and a stop block is also helpful in this regard.

-- Shameless - Winner of two Stumpy Nubs Awards

One option, if your saw isn’t accurate at angles, is to cut square first, then use a 45 degree router bit in your router table to make the angles. There are several bits available at common angles to make polygonal shapes.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

I use a dedicated sled with two incra sliders for the slots and the TS blade at 45 deg. I like the sliders. In 5 minutes or less I can tilt my blade, get the sled off the shelf, place it on the saw, and raise the blade to the proper height. I make a test cut on a scrap and measure the angle. I rarely have to adjusts the blade angle. So far the Incra sliders are holding up well and cutting accurately.

helluvawreck
https://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com

-- If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau

jacob, you got some decent hand planes, make a shooting board.

-- There is nothing like the sound of a well tuned hand plane. - http://timetestedtools.wordpress.com (timetestedtools at hotmail dot c0m)

Heal is to get well…HEEL is to tilt to one side. So if your cuts are healing it’s a good thing but HEEL is not

-- Few folks really know how to maximize the potential of their tools!

- make sure each of your opposing sides are TRUELY the exact same length (on many projects it matter a WHOLE lot more that they are teh exact same length than that they are exactly a specific length (i.e. exactly 6”)
- and the truely key point (IMHO) is SNEAK UP on the cut! Make sure your last cut on the miter is less than the full width of your blade – the slighter the better.

+1 for what Rob said (above). I find this to be the biggest and most overlooked factor in getting good miters for boxes.

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