: Tony,

: The blade was not tilted away from the fence. For some unknown reason it was
: removing more wood at the bottom of the cut than at the top. If I ran the
: board through without turning it over, the next strips still came out
: thicker at the top. If I flipped the board over between cuts, they came
: out fine, with the exception of the first strip.

: Richard

Hi Richard

Boy, you've got a wierd one there. You say the blade was 90* to the table, and yet it was cutting more at the bottom than the top. Unless your blade is turning as it goes down below the table, that would be physically impossibe. And I doubt your blade was flexing only at that one point.

However, there are four other possibilities: One is that your fence is slightly tilted away from the blade and in an effort to keep the wood against the fence, you may be ever-so-slightly tilting the material up on the away side to close the gap. That would cut out at the bottom.

The second possibility is that your plate around your blade is flexing as you pass over it, or, you have some dust built up under one side of it and that is holding it up slightly or causeing it to rock a bit.

The third would be if you have one of the plates that has the setscrews in the corners to level it and they are out of adjustment and causing the tilt.

Number four is one you don't want and is not likely fixable. You may have a slightly worn arbor and it spins true under a no-load condition, but, when pressure is applied as in feeding your material through the blade, it torques the arbor downward and undercuts your material. I'm thinking that would only be true if you are cutting with your fence on the left side of the blade. ( you left handed? )

Were only talking thousandths of an inch here and you probably couldn't see it. TURN THE SAW OFF, UNPLUG IT, TAKE THE PLATE OFF AND SEE IF YOU CAN WIGGLE THE BLADE, EITHER TOP TO BOTTOM OR SIDE TO SIDE. IF YOU CAN MOVE IT AT ALL, IT'S VERY UNSTABLE AND UNSAFE. Time to be lookin for another saw or other options.

Blade flex is not likely the problem as you would have a lot of vibration if it were. And even then, you would have a very uneven and scratchy cut in your strips.

Hope this helps and that it's not a bad arbor. :(

Rehd