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I got this cheapie saw from Harbor Freight, and started trying it out. It worked pretty well for someone that didn't know squat about a scroll saw. I read that most blades will pull to the right but mine didn't. I thought how lucky I was that mine was just perfect.
I had squared the table with the blade and done all the suggested adjustments and made some cuts and was well satisfied with it. Until I learned more about scroll saws.
One problem that I did have though was when I stopped a cut then tried to restart in the same place. It was almost impossible. The blade seemed to always catch on another place nearby and no matter how I tried to start in a new place it usually went back to the old notch. Made firewood of several attempts just because of that. Also it almost never went back on the old track I had started and wanted to return to later.
Then yesterday I had just completed a cut, removed the wood and happened to look down at the lower pin holder. It was just shimmying back and forth. I had never noticed that before. I restarted the saw without wood and looked it over real good. The table was squared to the blade I thought but it still was off. I remembered reading the blade should be a black line when running but this wasn't.
After giving it my meanest dirty look it still wasn't right. It occurred to me that maybe the blade holders weren't square either. Sure enough the top holder was out of align. I readjusted it by sight because I don't know how to square a blade to an unknown square of the table now. I put a level on the table and adjusted it to level then tried to square the blade to that using a T-square. I guess I did alright because it stopped doing it's own thing and is now able to follow my patterns without hanging up on something.
The end result is that it seems to cut square now but the blades DO veer to the right. Now I have to learn to cut all over allowing for the right side pull. So much for being lucky huh?
I had squared the table with the blade and done all the suggested adjustments and made some cuts and was well satisfied with it. Until I learned more about scroll saws.
One problem that I did have though was when I stopped a cut then tried to restart in the same place. It was almost impossible. The blade seemed to always catch on another place nearby and no matter how I tried to start in a new place it usually went back to the old notch. Made firewood of several attempts just because of that. Also it almost never went back on the old track I had started and wanted to return to later.
Then yesterday I had just completed a cut, removed the wood and happened to look down at the lower pin holder. It was just shimmying back and forth. I had never noticed that before. I restarted the saw without wood and looked it over real good. The table was squared to the blade I thought but it still was off. I remembered reading the blade should be a black line when running but this wasn't.
After giving it my meanest dirty look it still wasn't right. It occurred to me that maybe the blade holders weren't square either. Sure enough the top holder was out of align. I readjusted it by sight because I don't know how to square a blade to an unknown square of the table now. I put a level on the table and adjusted it to level then tried to square the blade to that using a T-square. I guess I did alright because it stopped doing it's own thing and is now able to follow my patterns without hanging up on something.
The end result is that it seems to cut square now but the blades DO veer to the right. Now I have to learn to cut all over allowing for the right side pull. So much for being lucky huh?
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