My neighbor gave me one of them, labeled by Wholesale Tools, but the same old same old one. I just finished cleaning and tuning it and have a couple of observations that I'll pass along.
- Blade tension. With a glove on, I put one hand on the tensioning knob and my other hand over the first. I cranked as hard as I could. The instructions in the Owner's Manual for the Jet saw (posted by Grant, thanks) say that the blade will deflect .004 under finger pressure when the correct tension is applied. HA! It deflects .020 with minor pressure and it's not hard to deflect it .100. I'd like to see the guy that tensions it by hand to .004 deflection.
- Blade guide clearance. Since the blade guides put the twist in the blade, they are always in tight contact with it. To adjust to .001 clearance, I twisted the blade with a pliers just before it entered the guide, so the guide itself did not put any twist on it. Then the clearance could be set.
- Tracking. - The Owner's Manual doesn't say so, and in case it isn't obvious, the blade guides have to be removed before adjusting the tracking. - The bolt that holds the sliding plate to the draw block has to be loosened to adjust the tracking. It should be loosened only slightly (less than 1/2 turn). Otherwise the draw block, and the attached wheel, will be displaced away from the bow and out-of-plane with the other wheel.
- The upper casting ("saw bow") is attached to the bed by a pivot. There are two ears on the bed and on the bow there is an ear and a pivot bracket. A shaft goes through these 4 mounts. To avoid having the bow shift back and forth on the shaft, the pairs of these mounts should be tight. On my saw there was about 1/8" travel. Not Good. I loosened the bracket and took up the travel. Then there was a binding when the saw was raised to vertical and a camming action to force the bracket away. The cause was a bad fit between the cutting-side ear on the bed and the bow ear. I filed it to fit.
Now we'll see whether it's as useful as everybody says they are.
Bob