Miter saw won't cut straight.

[LFS19]

I'm having allot of trouble with my miter saw.

It's one from the Bosch GCM range, and it doesn't cut perfectly square.
As with any miter saw, you can pivot the saw to fit any angle.
On most saws I've seen, the saw locks perfectly at each increment, leaving no room for error.
On mine it doesn't do this, and it's up to you to get it perfectly dead on to which ever notch you need, which I can't seem to do.

I find it incredibly difficult to finely align the blade so that the arrow is perfectly at zero, or perfectly at forty five degrees for a miter.
It's always ever so slightly off, making the saw basically useless for precision cutting.
The mechanism for moving the angle is heavy too, even when it's fully slackened off, so to get it right is really difficult.

I was wondering if anyone had any advise on how I might rectify this or where I'm going wrong.
I've had the saw for a month or so now and rarely do I ever get a perfectly square cut with it because of this feature.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

 

[Rorschach]

Personally I have never used the gauges or anything on my saws, now mine have always been cheaper tools so maybe not equivalent to a more professional tools but I think I would still use a square/protractor when setting anyway.

 

[Wuffles]

Ring Bosch, tell them, they'll send a courier to come and take it away and fix it. Those saws should have positive stops at the major cutting angles, unless you are doing something wrong?

Did you register the extra warranty?

 

[LFS19]

Thanks for the replies.

the saw is second hand, unfortunately, so there won't be any chance of calling Bosch. I paid £60.

So these saws SHOULD have the locking feature? I thought that it just wasn't a feature included in this design, it's my fault then - I should've realized.
Everything else works, it's just that. That small feature though is preventing me from using it in any way that would be useful to me.

The model is the GCM 800S

 

[LFS19]

Massive idiot moment - turns out I was doing something wrong.

You press a leaver underneath the handle you use to slide the same to which ever angle.
What I was doing wrong, was keeping hold of that handle as I moved the slider, but all you have to do is press it in once, and then when you move it, it will lock to each angle.
by continue holding it as I thought you had to, I had it in fine adjust mode.

Silly me, sorry

 

[Wuffles]

Yep, there's a foot on it too I think, to stop the saw toppling over, but sometimes the foot needs adjusting up to make it all easier to move about too.

 

[blackrodd]

I see you have now solved the setting problem,
Here's a link, shows the settings and adjustments, just in case it's useful to you, Happy cutting,
Rodders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEG5IzfqJeU

 

[Brian18741]

Glad it turned out to be a simple solution and you got it working! I have the same problem on mine but it's a cheap Aldi affair. I have to position it at about 1.5° and run a few test cuts before I trust it to be square. I've given up on the idea of jumping from square to mitre and back again easily!