table saw tune-up

My saw has been a little out of whack for a few months. A few issues. First the fence was not plumb. I thought one of the glide pads was worn down but it turned out to be a warped table causing it. Not the table actually, but the fence rails. I have a 50" Biesemeyer that has a 7’ rail front and back. I’ve been messing with the height of the table recently and one of the extension legs was too low, causing the table to warp. Bringing that back into level all around fixed the fence plumbness issue.

Then I set my sights on the fence rule. It’s been a little off for a while. It hasn’t really bothered me since I haven’t been doing much lately that requires absolute precision measuring. So I bought a digital caliper for this job. I took a piece of the teak we’ve been using at work and cut it to one inch thickness. Then I measured and it was almost 1/32 off. I nudged the fence and kept cutting it until I got it down to precisely one inch. Shaving off the edge proceed to be a difficult task. The teak is so hard that if I pushed it quickly it would just push the blade out to the left. After I figured that out, I pushed it through slowly. That worked and I ended up with a piece exactly an inch wide. Then after all that, with the fence still locked at the position that have me a precise one inch cut, I adjusted the rule marker on the fence to one inch. I’d like to say it’s exact, but really it’s as close as my old eyes with both reading glasses and magnifying glass could make it.

A nice byproduct of this exercise is that I now have a durable and precise reference block for crosscutting. I’ll clamp it to the fence and add an inch to my cut dimension so I can make the cut off the fence. I should have bought one of these calipers before.

This is the fence at actual 1" before adjusting the rule marker:

Here’s a shot of precise 1". :-)

Next job is to lube the trunnion with some paste wax. I’m tired of the squealing.