Hmm, having the blade parallel to the slot is the most important adjustment to make, as all other adjustments are made with the assumption that table and blade are indeed parallel. That is the foundation upon which everything else depends, so it seems it would be important to make sure that that relationship is dead on.
If the blade is out of alignment to the table such that the rear is canted to the right, a crosscut will indeed be be square, (cove analogy works here), although the offcut won't be square. But if canted to the left, unless the work piece is pushed all the way past the back of the blade, which few of us actually do with crosscuts, the result will be out of square if the work piece is wider than the blade, as the back of the board will have been cut by both front and back of blade, whereas the front will have only been cut once.
The beauty of the 5 cut method is that it measures the actual cut, which is always more accurate than measuring the mechanical bits of the saw. That's why you can't just lay down a square to the blade and set the fence with that. Any misalignment, blade flexing, runout and such is already factored in when you measure how the saw actually cuts rather than how it should cut.
The GargaeWorks guy in the video linked to in post #53 did get a good setup, but we never saw how it actually cut, so we can't be sure of how it actually works out. We also didn't see how long he had to fiddle with the fence to get that final result, he edited that part out. Even if it does cut as true as the setup, technically William Ng's result is ten times as accurate (.001 over 8" vs .001 over 80" respectively). Though most of us would be satisfied with the former, if you can easily get the latter, why not go for it? The other thing is, I would have to order that square and wait for it to arrive, whereas with the five cut, all I need to do is find a scrap of mdf or plywood, no waiting. That said, if I already had a square like that, the scientist in me would want to give that method a try.
GarageWoks guy did have a great idea for the wood adjustable runner though!
Dan
Last edited by Dan Forman; 09-23-2017 at 1:16 PM.
Eternity is an awfully long time, especially toward the end.
-Woody Allen-
Critiques on works posted are always welcome