This is a fiddly, PITA adjustment!
First off, do you have any idea how old the saw is? I think the country of manufacture has changed, from France to China in recent years (I welcome corrections on this). It's probable that the design details have also changed at the same time.
Also does the blade chafe the table itself, or the removable throat plate (RHS)?
I ask, because the earlier design (which I have) was "not nice" in that it's awkward to get tools onto the nuts you need to hold still, and thus the whole adjustment is tricky, and in my case involved so much er, 'descriptive' language, I re-designed the offending pieces. And the side it chafes may tell you what's wrong (see (4) below).
Also check the blade shaft bearings are good (no visible audible or feel-able play), and that the blade is not distorted in any way (can happen if it overheats or there's been an accident with the saw at some time).
Safety:
Disconnect the saw from the mains before doing any of this!. Also check the tightness of every nut and bolt you've touched before reconnecting any power. If you remove any nuts or bolts (with the exception of the side panels) use thread-locking compound (Loctite or similar) before tightening.
1. The understanding: Get Steve Maskery's "Compleat Tablesaw" DVDs, because you need to understand the setup necessities. These are pretty similar for all saws, although generally more expensive saws are easier.
2. The task: armed with understanding, you have to set the blade alignment properly. This means you also need to be armed with a dial gauge (probably), and some means of indexing it to the mitre track. There are other, less accurate ways of doing this, but there is a safety issue too (propensity to kickback), so the better you can do it, the better the results and the safer the saw.
I have a cheap dial gauge from Machine Mart (or somewhere like that - can't remember to be truthful). I also have a non-magnetic stand/base, that has a couple of pegs that can be extended from the base, which catch in the mitre track, making indexing easy. The scale doesn't matter - imperial or metric will do - you're looking for dimilarities and differences in readings.
3. The Terminology: See Steve's videos!
Meanwhile:
- Saw plate - the disc of metal that is most of the blade, to which the teeth are usually brazed (if it's got TCT teeth).
- Trunnions - The pivots for tilting the blade. On expensive/bigger saws these are two tracks, each following the arc of a circle, one at each end of the blade. That's because you need the centre of tilt to be *exactly* in line with one side of the teeth of the blade, and *exactly* in line with the top of the table too. You can't achieve this properly any other way, so 419s, Axy TS200s etc. are an approximation (and a down-to-a-price compromise). I'd expect that doing it properly costs 20x the cost of the 419 arrangements, so I'm happy to live with it. Bear in mind though that it is a compromise, and can only be exactly correct for one angle of tilted blade (pick an angle - most people choose straight up!)...
- Carriage: the gubbins that holds the blade, motor and lift/lower arrangements. All of it tilts on the trunnions. I may be using the wrong term here (sliding tables have a 'sliding carriage' too, which adds confusion), but it'll serve here!
- Throat plate: The removable bit of aluminium to the right of the blade, that lets you get access to the spindle for changing blades, etc.
4. The Sanity Check: My 419 has no shims either side of the blade. It doesn't need any. IF SOMEONE HAS FITTED AN INAPPROPRIATE BLADE, this could be the cause of the problem. For example, if the central hole of the blade is oversize, it might have a reducing ring fitted. If the ring is wider than the saw plate (quite possible), then there have to be shims to allow the blade to be safely gripped by the clamping arrangements. This will move the blade to the right (by the width of the shim), and muck up the geometry!
Similarly, if there's a particularly wide kerf blade fitted, that will do the same thing. In the first case (shims) it's likely to catch on the throat plate. In the second case it's likely to catch on the saw table itself.
Start with the correct blade for the saw. That's either like the one Kity supply (i.e. same plate thickness and kerf width. No. of teeth aren't relevant), or a thin kerf blade, similar to the ones Freud sell. If the latter, you may need a thinner riving knife, too (for another thread!).
5. 419 details:
The trunnions are very simple: There is a piece of round bar (8mm, I think - memory's going!) sticking out from each end of the saw carriage. They pivot in adjustable castings that are bolted up underneath the cast tabletop. If you look at the tabletop, there are two pairs of Allen-headed bolts, about 30mm apart, aligned at right-angles to the blade (across the tabletop), one pair at each end of the blade opening. These hold the "trunnion" castings in place. The castings themselves are aluminium, about 2" long x 0.5"sq.. They have two elongated holes for the bolts, one at each end, and a "U" in the middle where the pivot sits (it's a squared off slot on mine, not a rounded "U").
You have to simply loosen these bolts, allowing the trunnion castings to slide across. measure with the gauge on the saw plate to keep it parallel with the mitre slot, then tighten everything up again. Looking from the front of the saw, you need to slide the little trunnion castings across - left or right, depending on where it's catching. This moves the pivot point of the blade away from the edge of the opening, and the teeth then shouldn't catch as the saw tilts.
It's a hellish job.
Hardly any spanners I have will fit the nuts beneath the tabletop, because of access difficulties. You have to remove the rails for the fence, and those for the sliding table (if you have one). You might try resting the table on end, on the back edge (adjustment handle upwards), but (a) the dust extraction port sticks out a bit, so the bottom edge of the cabinet will need to be on a block, (b) it won't help you get to the back trunnion, and (c) when you put it the right way up again, gravity will probably throw all the adjustments off again!
I think I got on best with open-ended spanners. Ring spanners would be better (you need two), but there isn't the clearance to get them over the bolts easily. My mod is a far better solution...
...I've modified my trunnion castings to make it easier - filed each smooth on the bottom side (do NOT mess with the top that touches the underside ofthe table in use!). I've then made up a plate to hold both nuts together - IIRC they're M6 thread, so I just welded two M6 nuts to a strip of steel with the right spacing. You could easily just use a thicker plate with tapped holes, instead of nuts, but I was being lazy. IIRC, it's a threaded plate on the Axminster TS200, whiich is a VERY similar design to the Kity.
Now I don't need a spanner underneath the table any more - the adjustment can be done by loostening the bolts with an Allen key above the table top, which is much, much simpler. BUT you have to strip down an awful lot of the saw to be able to get at and remove-modify-and-replace the trunnion arrangements.
. . .
This took way too long to explain!
Check the details I asked about at the top of the posting and report back. Assuming everything is standard and not modified, then you need to adjust the trunnion alignment, per above. If that proves impossible, it's just possible someone's bent those bits of 8mm bar, which would throw out the entire thing and be a difficult repair.
Will wait to hear back.
E.
