While I was waiting for new blades from sawblade.com to arrive this week, I spent some quality time with my saw and discovered that there was a lot of gunk between the blade guide bar and the slot it fits into (the one closer to the hinge end of the saw).? Cleaning it up actually straightened the blade out a bit, but only by a degree or two.? I tried inverting the blade too, but it didn't make any difference.? ?When the new blades showed up today, they still cut at an angle, so I knew it wasn't the blade.? I thought about shimming the blade guides to change the angle of the blade, but that wouldn't fix the problem, just the symptoms.? I adjusted the cams, and it cut a little straighter, but after about a minute of cutting some aluminum, the blade suddenly stopped.? One of the bearings had broken (a chunk fell out of the outer race!) and the dust caps had popped off.? Obviously way too tight.? Another set of bearings was swapped in, and then the blade wouldn't stay on the wheels.? This was going downhill fast, so I stepped back and realized that the best way to adjust the bearings was without the blade, and off the machine.? Much easier!? I only did one test cut, which was almost perfect, and left it to work on some other things.
Last week, when I checked the HF blade for squareness, it looked right on (both before and after I inverted it.).? Today when I checked the new blade, it was obviously not square, but both cut at the same angle before adjustment.? If further tweaking doesn't make it cut dead straight consistently, I'm thinking about adding set screws to channels the guide bars sit in so that the angle can be finely adjusted.
