Hello folks
I want to level up and make my own fret cutting saw like Mark's on the videos. I've sourced a blade and jig and have an idea how to make the sled. My problem is that the blade is only 80mm diameter with a 30mm bore. This is no good for my existing table saw as the blade is too small to pro5ude above the table. In any case, I suspect the motor is too powerful to cut delicate frets. I've scoured the local shops and the internet but have not managed to find a suitable table top saw. Any pointers to a saw that will take an 80mm blade welcome.
Cheers
James
Hi James,
Your options with an 80mm diameter blade are going to be very limited and you are unlikely to find any commercially available table saw that will take this blade and give you a sufficient depth of cut. 80mm-30mm=50mm/2 = 25mm max depth. Given that the shaft is going to be mounted with some clearance to the underside of the table and the table itself will be of some thickness it would pretty difficult even to manufacture a custom table for it. Was the blade horribly expensive?
I bought a 125mm diameter x 0.6mm kerf solid carbide blade with a 22mm bore from NLS (North London Saw) in Waltham Cross which I am building into a fret cutting table saw but this has required a custom shaft to be machined in order to give adequate depth of cut. I worked out that I only need to make around 180 fretboards myself and the savings on buying pre-cut ones will mean that I have broken even!! Suddenly spending 30 minutes doing by hand doesn't seem such a bad idea! If you check back on my posts you should find a picture of the box of bits waiting for the next stage.
BTW I don't think you need to worry about a motor being too powerful. Being underpowered is far more of an issue as it will result in the rotational speed varying as you cut and will lead to overheating of the motor. Whatever diameter of blade you end up with remember that, to avoid kick back, you need to be achieving a cut speed speed of around 40 metres per second which means, with an 80mm blade, spinning it at almost 9600rpm. Again, you will never find a commercially available table saw that will run at this speed as they will be designed to take larger diameter blades and so the shaft RPM will be much lower. This is significant safety issue when changing the blade diameter on a table saw so be very careful.
Darren
@darrenking Excellent answer ! I would like to also add another warning...
Don't be tempted to run the blade over the top of the fretboard - it might seem like a good solution but it has the potential to be a lot more dangerous.
Measure twice, cut once...
