Crown moulding blowout - cheap mitre saw let me down big time

I was fitting crown in a 12x14 bedroom in Cleveland and my old mitre saw was off by almost 2 degrees on a compound cut. The third corner had a gap you could stick a nickel through. Any tips for dialing in a budget saw without spending on a Festool?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_park2mo ago

Nah I'd push back on that. A blade swap is a bandaid, not a fix. If your saw's out by 2 degrees on compound cuts, that's a mechanical issue, not a blade wobble thing. Did you actually check the detents with a decent square or are you guessing?

tessa_clark741mo ago

I heard a guy on a woodworking podcast say that blade runout can actually mimic misaligned miter detents sometimes.

the_anthony2mo ago

Did you check if the blade is square to the table? I spent two hours once fighting a saw that was actually fine, the cheap blade just had too much wobble at full extension. Sometimes swapping to a Diablo blade fixes half the issues before you even touch the saw's stops.