- Joined
- Mar 19, 2014
- Messages
- 2,681
I have two Unisaws and an old cast iron Delta chop saw with no slide feature. Together with all three I can cut very accurate wood cuts. My last comment was from personal experience and I will stand by it. The wood trade (for example) is full of toys and gadgets and are advertise to make you think you need all of them. Not you, but people have lost the finesse to do craftsman workmanship with minimal tooling. They run out and buy that gizmo thing because it was advertise on TV or Joe down the block said he has one now so you have to go buy one. My Unisaws can rip very accurately but when I need a good miter I go to the chop saw. It’s a 10” and the pivot is tight with no slop. I took the time to perfectly align the two cast iron back guides. And it has Freud blade in it. When I check the cut of a 90° with a square, it’s light tight (the length would be run through a jointer first)…Good Luck, Dave.The problem with chop saws is also accuracy. First, if you have a larger 12" chop saw, there's too much flex in the blade for truly accurate cuts. They are best suited to rough carpentry applications. 10 in. saws are better, but be sure to check the square of the fence. Some saws have a 1-piece fence that cannot be adjusted true and need to be removed and ground straight. As for table saws, there are many VERY accurate saws out there and if you have a cheaper one there are many ways to accurize them, for instance, adding machined pulleys, a link belt and I got something called Saw Pals that attache to the rear trunnion that allow adjustment of the blade's parallelism to the slots to be adjusted with allen keys and locked rather than just loosened up and knocked into place with a chunk of wood and a hammer!
That and other accessories and aftermarket fences and jigs have allowed me scary accuracy.
Kevin