Cove cutting on the tablesaw

[transatlantic]

I keep seeing this come up in youtube videos and it just feels wrong. I don't think I would ever try it, but out of curiousity, what are the inherent dangers?

 

[Hornbeam]

This was the method I used for cutting about100ft of walnut coving and yes it does feel a bit worrying. I built a fully enclosed guide tunnel over the blade. Take a lot of time to set up the position and I left about 2mm unmachined on the front and back edges. Raise the blade by small amounts so you dont try and take too much in 1 go. Dust /chip extraction needs to be very good (mine struggled on a softwood prototype but that was more down to the more resinous wood). Surface finish isnt great but nothing a bit of elbow grease and a shaped sanding block wont sort out. If I had spindle moulder tooling I would have done it that way.
You can create quite large coves but as they get larger so the amount of material and lateral pressure on saw blade increases. You need to do a bit of maths to work out angles and saw blade diameter/depth for a given cove

 

[Steve Maskery]

I've done it before, but it is a pain to try to guard properly. Plus there is the difficulty of keeping the workpiece hard down on the table.
Also, a tablesaw's bearings are not designed to take a sideways thrust.
Anyone with just a small run to do would be better off getting a trad hollow plane and working up a sweat for an hour or two.