Table at 90, how accurate is accurate?

[Jesse St Louis]

I was aligning my new DeWalt 788 saw this morning, by using a digital angle guage.

First I placed a piece of stiff steel in place of the blade, increased tension to the max and zeroed the angle guage on the steel.

Then I placed the angle guage on the table top, it was off by 3.8 degrees. I loosened the knob and set the table to be 89.9 degrees. For some reason I could not get that final 1/10 degree.

But, when I tightened the knob the table moved to 89.4 degrees.

Repeated attempts produce the same result.

So, My question is "Does 0.6 degrees matter? If so, in what type of project?"

Thanks In Advance,

Jesse

[Daryl185]

if say your stack cutting and your cutting some real close lines it could mean your bottom piece would be ruined by pieces being cut through HTH

[Rolf]

I did a quick drawing in Autocad to get an Idea of how big a problem it is.
If you are off by only .6 deg it equates to about .01 " in a half inch of wood.
In 3/4 wood it is .015 inches.
The 3.8 deg error on the other hand will be a real problem at 1/2 inch it is about 1/16 and @3/4 it is about .1 inch. I wouldn't worry about the .6 degrees.

[workin for wood]

My saw is set on 89.2 degrees, which is what I have found to be perfect with a #9 skip on woods up to 2" thick which I commonly cut. I find that a perfect 90 doesn't work right for me and I end up with a slight angle which is exacerbated with thicker wood. Could be the hook on the blade that makes it need to be this way, or the way that I cut, perhaps a combination of those and the fact that most of my cuts occur in the same direction. I can cut any direction, but I have a habit of mostly cutting in one direction. I determine what works best by tossing the gauge into the drawer and making a couple test cuts. It's real simple, just make a straight cut about 1/8 into a piece of wood. Flip the wood upside down and make another test cut the same about 1/2" or whatever beside the first cut. My tiny 6" steel ruler measures down to the 1/64...I measure the distance between the tops of the two cuts and the bottom of the two cuts. If the distance is the same, good to go.