Lost a full afternoon to a bad miter saw blade swap

I was building a set of bookshelves for my brother's house in Phoenix last weekend, and I swapped my 60-tooth finish blade for a new 40-tooth combo blade without checking the arbor size first. Turns out the new blade had a 5/8 inch bore and my saw takes a 1 inch arbor with a reducer ring I forgot to install. Spent 3 hours burning through 14 feet of oak plywood before I realized the blade was wobbling and burning every cut. Has anyone else had a simple saw setup issue that just ate up a whole day?

3 comments

3 Comments

harper_wright18d ago

You ever have a buddy who swears he's a pro but can't read a tape measure? My friend Mike tried to swap blades on his miter saw last summer and put the whole thing on backwards. He spent like 5 hours fighting with this thing, making these ragged cuts and blaming the wood. He finally called me over and I saw the teeth were pointing the wrong way. He felt like such a dummy but honestly I couldn't stop laughing.

ericb6618d agoMost Upvoted

Blame the blade all you want but like @harper_wright said sometimes it's the little things that get you. The wobble should have been obvious after the first couple cuts if you stopped to actually look at the blade spinning instead of just rushing through the work. Next time run the saw without cutting anything first and watch the blade for a second before you burn a whole afternoon.

lee_gibson18d ago

Right after harper_wright's buddy story, I started taping my blade inserts to the saw body so I can't miss 'em.