Clamp mitre saw for profiling

[meow2222]

Leading on from another thread.... is there a known way to clamp a compound mitre saw in a less than fully down position, so it can be used to profile wood strip?

NT

[JimK]

To achieve what?

Jim K

[Capitol]

Yes, you can adjust the bottom stop on some saws. I don't see what that achieves?

[John Rumm]

Do you mean fixing the saw head in position so that you can use it to make cove style cuts as you might on a table saw, or do you men just limiting the plunge at a particular depth so that you can make trench cuts for dados etc?

If the latter - yes on some sliding mitre saws, but not all have the limit mechanism.

The former would require something individual for each saw.

[meow2222]

The former. I don't see anything on the saw that would do it. I guess its a s I thought, there's no known hack and I'd need to come up with something c ustom. I'd much rather use the mitre saw for this one as its great quality, whereas the tablesaw is of much lower parentage.

NT

[stuart noble]

Rather you than me! Even on the old radial arm saws where the body could be rotated it was a scary procedure.

[John Rumm]

Mine has a bolt that locks it in the closed position, but it can't lock it in an arbitrary position.

Two limitations of using it that way spring to mind. The first is that most mitre saws can't rotate much more than 45 degrees - that will limit the scope for cutting smaller coves. The second is that the design is not really intended to have massive side to side rigidity. So you may find that you get less "slop" from even a basic table saw.

[meow2222]

ditto

and slight blade bend would cause striations, so maybe its not so great. I dont like the router but maybe its the way forward.

NT

[John Rumm]

You will get a surface that needs sanding certainly - but that is true even on a table saw cut cove.

What radius of cove do you need to cut?

Handy table of setup angles etc here:

[meow2222]

something in the quarter to half inch region. If I dont see a way to clamp the mitre I'll look at other options, dont want to use my crap tablesaw the n have to sand it all. Presumably router. I suppose I could get out a mould ing plane, but the cut patterns aren't really what I want here.

NT

[John Rumm]

Chances are it will need sanding with any saw blade cut cove. The main problem I see with a small cove like that is the angle to the blade required will be quite shallow - i.e. less than 45 degrees, and you won't be able to get that between the fence of the mitre saw and the blade. You would need to make some form of additional fence above the existing one that runs nearly perpendicular to it.

[meow2222]

I see what you mean. And the shallower the angle the less stable the blade is. Maybe time to curse the router.

NT

[John Rumm]

The shallower the angle - the closer the blade is to its "normal" loading (i.e. less lateral force on it) - so in that sense not a problem, but any angle outside of the 90 - 45 range that's easy to setup on a mitre saw is going to require some inventive fence building - and the fence can't be completely perpendicular to the normal one, since the back hinge / slide mechanism will be in the way.

But for this application, I would agree a router is the way to go if you have a suitable cutter.

Tee lower cove section I did for this:

was just made with a 1/2" radius cove bit in a router (in a table rather than freehand - since its much easier to set feather boards up to keep a nice even feed past the bit)