As I said in yesterday’s post, I had a bad day trying to cut tongue and groove joints on my table saw. Here’s a few of the details.
I love have a love/hate relationship with my SawStop JobSite table saw. There’s a lot to love, and a lot to, well, not love. Yesterday, some of the latter came into play.
I love the fact that I can raise and lower the blade with one turn of the crank. This allows me to easily lower the blade while it’s spinning down, so I don’t accidentally touch the blade. Actually, it makes it so I don’t touch the blade on purpose either, but that’s less likely to happen. Not out of the realm of possibility for me, though.
Yesterday, I got to experience the downside of the crank. Since it moves the blade a lot for a small amount of turn, it makes it really hard to get the blade to an exact height. Also, if you happen to brush against the crank knob accidentally, you don’t know if you changed the height or not, since there’s no lock.
And trust me, the more time I spent trying to dial in the height, the greater the odds of me brushing against the crank. Multiple times. Enough to make me use some combinations of cuss words I had forgotten about.
So there’s that.
Then, the insert plate I use for the dado stack is made out of plastic, and it dips in the middle if you put pressure on it. I know, I know, I need to make my own insert plates. I keep saying “later”. Yesterday, I was saying “Why the fudgesickle have I waited?!?!” (But did I stop and make one? Nooooooo. So this process is guaranteed to be repeated.)
So, there’s that, too.
I’m sure plenty of other things went wrong too. But I’ll end this with the log that broke the camel’s back.
I finally got everything right where I wanted it. Almost, actually. So I made one final adjustment, grabbed my scrap piece, and tested it. Oops, too much. No problem, I’ll just fiddle with it until I get it right.
Except.
I didn’t grab a scrap piece, I grabbed one of my rails. So, it turns out I used a project piece to test a cut, and basically ruined the piece.
No problem, right? Just cut another rail. Except, that means I have to remove the dado stack, which means when I cut the new piece, I have to do EVERY…FREAKING…THING over again, to cut the dado and tongue in the new piece.
Well, the H E double-toothpicks with that!
So I ordered this router bit set from Amazon:
Freud 1-3/4” (Dia.) Adjustable Tongue & Groove Bit Set with 1/2” Shank (99-036)
I started working with it this morning, and it looks really promising. Time will tell.
Later.
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