Old timer at the lumberyard told me my miters were off by 3 degrees

I was framing a bay window in a house near Portland and felt good about my cuts. An older guy named Chuck walked by, looked at my joint, and said 'you're losing a 16th on the outside edge.' He showed me how my saw wasn't square to the fence because of a tiny bit of sawdust buildup. I cleaned it out and re-cut, and the joint closed up perfect. Anyone else ever get a simple tip from a stranger that fixed something you'd been fighting with for months?

3 comments

3 Comments

mila_campbell2520d agoMost Upvoted

Gotta disagree a little bit here. Sure a clean saw is important and Chuck sounds like a helpful guy, but a 3 degree error on a miter joint usually means something is wrong with the saw setup itself, not just a speck of dust. I've had sawdust buildup throw off my cuts before but that's more like half a degree at most, not a full 3 degrees. Sounds more like your saw's fence is out of square and Chuck was being nice about how to fix it without making you feel dumb. Bet if you check the square again with a real framing square you'll find the real problem.

noahmartin20d ago

Same thing happened to me with a tablesaw. Dust made me chase ghosts for weeks.

ray13620d ago

Well now, Mila makes a good point. A full 3 degrees out of square is a pretty big swing just from dust alone. I have to agree with her that the fence is probably the real culprit here. I've worked with saws for thirty years and dust might throw things off a tiny bit but not that much. It sounds like the fence needs to be checked with a good square and adjusted properly. That kind of error usually means the fence is tilted or the blade isn't parallel to the miter slot.