Cutting maple for the first time on my Uni.....

Mark Rios

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Central CA
I finally ripped some real wwod last night on my Uni. Previously I had only cut out my cabinet carcass parts but last night I ripped some maple for edge banding my shelves. I used a Freud GLR 30T blade.

I like working with walnut and maple so I've ripped a BUNCH of maple on my old Ridgid. (Quite probably not as much as some of you REAL WWer's but a couple of thousand feet anyway. I had a little burning here and there on the old saw but I had a ton of burning on my Uni. I set up my saw very carefully and took my time, doing it to my satisfaction, which is exacting. I took pretty much the whole day to assemble my table onto the base, set up the wings and extension table and install the fence and align everything. However, on my 1/8" rips, one side has burning down one side and none on the other. I ripped the strips away from the fence, IOW I dind't set the fence at 1/8" and make the rips; I moved the fence 1/4" for each cut. I don't usually make rips this way, I usually rip against the fence. Would/could this have been the difference?


I'm confused. Any ideas?

Thanks very much.
 
I've been dealing with the maple ripping, burning myself the last couple of weeks on these maple cabs.

My problem is, this batch of maple still has some stress issues, pinching the saw blade, etc.
 
mark, burning comes from the blade being in contact with the wood to long...a coupla things to look at;
1) fence toe out.....this will cause burning on the left side piece especially using featherboards or other types of holddown anywhere near the blade.
2) feed rate....a fairly fast-n-steady feed rate will all but eliminate the stop-n-go burn marks. i push `till the motor grunts and back off a "tad"....
3) blade geometry......a 30 tooth 10" blade is actually good for about 1/2" stock in my opinion......24 tooth or less for 3/4-7/8 seems to work fairly well...the old rule of thumb was no more than 2 teeth in the wood with the bottom of the gullet exposed....lotsa guys, myself included, find that this still works well..................some stuff to think about....tod
 
I will make a stab at it. If you have burning that means the blade is rubbing against the wood. Thats where you start. Assuming your burning is on the fence side I would say you don't have any clearance at the back of the blade. When the wood passes the back of the blade it should clear the blade, not touch it and I betting that is where your burning is taking place. You mentioned how careful you were setting it up so that really makes me think that this is your problem.

Year ago when I slept in a Holiday Inn I was a mechanical designer. Designed a lot of cutting tools. One of the things we often did on reamers and gun drills was add a taper on the back of the tool so it never touched the part after it was cut.

I would suggest adding just a little taper in your fence. If it is perfectly parallel to the blade and the back side is rubbing as the wood passes by that is probably the cause of the burning.

Of course I could be totally wrong too. :D
 
The side clearance of the 30 GLR blades is very shallow to give a polished edge. It also is more prone to burning. As mentioned, the GLR's aren't really optimum for heavy ripping. You should have no trouble with 24T FTG blade....heck alot of 40T general purp blades should do well with that saw too.
 
I always toe out my fence 1/32 to a 1/16 and let er fly.
I don't worry to much about the slight amount of burning when it shows up.
Besides, usually whatever it is I am ripping, it gets jointed or edge sanded.

I very seldom stray from a 24 T rip blade either.
 
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