Description
How much do you trust your table saw's bevel gauge?
I rely on my table saw to make extremely accurate cuts. When I rip a board, I expect that edge to be 90 degrees to its face.
The bevel gauge on my table saw, as I've talked about in Bitesize 17, is useless. Using a good machinist square is how I make my blade square to the tabletop, but that involves raising the blade to full height and spending time on setup. And even then, it's just a measurement that could be off.
To actually test whether my blade is cutting square before running good stock through, I have a quick test. It's easy and can be done with a piece of scrap.
Grab something that's at least an inch wide and line up your stock so that the blade removes about a sixteenth of an inch. Make a full cut and then flip the board over. Feed it into the blade a couple of inches, pull it back out, and turn off the saw.
If your blade is slightly out of square, the second cut will leave a visible mark where the teeth have removed extra material. And that's what I love about this test. I'm not trying to measure a fraction of a degree. I'm basically letting the blade show me exactly where it's cutting differently.
The same principle can be demonstrated with a miter gauge using just one cut.
Cut a section off a piece of scrap, flip one of the pieces over, and bring the two freshly cut faces together on the tabletop.
If the blade isn't square, the two cuts will show twice the angular error, making even small differences easier to see.
The nice thing about this method is that you can also check whether your blade is cutting square to the surface of your table saw sled.
Even if your blade is perfectly square to the tabletop, that doesn't necessarily mean it's square to your sled.
It's not something you need to check all the time, but changes in your setup, including seasonal movement in a wooden sled, can make it something you want to check every once in a while.
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