[drobertson]

I have an old Grizzly G1022 table saw. For the most part it has been a great workhorse and after many sleds and jigs it gives me far better precision than I deserve.

Recently it has started to develop a problem. I carefully set the blade angle before a cut and by the middle of the cut the blade angle has drifted away from true. This can be extreme at times, up to 2-3 degrees. Obviously this is completely messing up the parts I am working on.

The problem is happening more and more often, but there doesn't seem to be any consistent symptoms. The saw isn't vibrating any more than normal. I am cutting down the middle of the wood, not an edge shave.

I have investigated as best I can and can't find any obvious source of the problems. Internally I checked the screws and connections and everything seems in order.

What bothers me is I can't find any screw or adjustment that would tighten down the blade angle adjust. I assumed that would fix my problem if I could only find it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am hoping someone smarter than me could give me a bit of advice.

 

[AlanWS]

If the 1022 is a contractor's saw like the Delta 34-444, it might lock the same way. In that saw, if you turn the knob in the middle of the crank that tilts the blade, that's what locks it. However, if the worm gear is clean and free of sawdust, the tilt should not shift much.

My guess is if you use a toothbrush to clean the sawdust out of the gears, it will help. Make sure to go over the entire range of motion, and everywhere you can reach. Apply some furniture wax while you're at it to lubricate the gears without providing a sticky surface to hold sawdust.

 

[drobertson]

I will check that out and also give the mechanism a good cleaning. It is actually in pretty good shape since I normally give it a good compressed air blow each time I clean out the dust bin. All the gears get cleaned fairly regularly. The toothbrush may take it up a level though.

 

[knotscott]

You should be able to clamp the hand wheel for the angle adjustment in place to prevent moving if it doesn't have a thread lock.

 

[drobertson]

Ok, I found the issue. This is a second hand saw. It seems that at some point in the saws history it needed some repair work on the tilt adjust handle and the tightening knob was lost or broken. The person replaced it with a 5/16 nut that actually didn't fit. The screw is actually a M8 metric screw. As a temporary fix I used a M8 Wingnut that seems to have helped the problem some. After examining the tightening mechanism I am not a fan of how they are doing it. A little bit of wear in the mechanism and you lose control again. For now it seems to be working.

I am going to take a brief moment to rant about companies who engineer products with a combination of Metric and SAE components. This is such an unnecessary and bad idea. It causes tremendous maintenance problems. There is NO REASON at all that they can't just standardize on SAE or Metric. This saw is primarily SAE components with a handful of random Metric components scattered through the system. I am not talking about some special component they could only get in metric. The part that caused all the problems is a threaded rod with a star knob attached.

As I was working with this I discovered that the blade height adjustment is having similar issues. The Blade is rising as the saw is working. Hopefully I can figure this out before I cut my hand off. Any thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks for the help everyone.