Although I did not notice it at the time, I think it may have occurred when a thin wedge shaped off-cut dropped in between the blade and the fixed table. This in turn caused the blade to suddenly stop turning and the rod that tightens the arbour to come loose. It all ended in an instant with a loud bang and the motor still running but the blade perfectly still.
I am not entirely sure how the tooth broke as a result of all this, I am guessing that the wedge deflected the blade so that it hit the edge of the sliding table, causing the tooth to break off. I have had off cut wedging problems before, but this is the first time a tooth has broken.
In any case it seems to cut fine, although I will probably still order a new blade.
Whoa that is scary! I have certainly chipped forrest blades before, but never taken a tooth off at its base like that. I am surprised that the blade stopped without the drawbar. DO you have the socket head cap screws which mechanically drive the faceplate in there or are they missing? Or do you have a modified arbor of some sort?
It is scary, I am lucky that the tooth did not hit me in the eye. I do have the screws in place, and my arbor is not modified it is the original one that I got with the saw.
You can also see in the foreground of the picture my original WW I blade that I had to replace since it got warped when it had a similar encounter with an off cut a few years ago. In fact that makes me think that I have not checked the broken tooth blade to see if it is still perfectly flat. I would not be at all surprised if it is now warped as well, although as I said it still seems to cut OK.
At this rate I will soon be Forrest's best customer for Glider blades!
I am not sure I understand how it could stop spinning if those socket head cap screws are in place?
Have you talked to forrest about possibly straightening the original blade? I wonder if they could retention it?
It sucks to lose blades. I've never really had issues with wedging cutoffs. Of course, not that I say that I will probably be screwed!
I have found that the faceplate that the blade screws to is not the most durable part of the saw. I have had to turn a number of them to make them flat again and I have one that is unusable due to micro cracks that I can only attribute to age. Keep you eye on that plate.
I sent both those blades back to Forrest to see if they could fix them for me. They either fixed them or just sent me new ones I am not sure which, but now I have four blades in total so no excuse for running even a slightly dull blade!
crzypete wrote:I am not sure I understand how it could stop spinning if those socket head cap screws are in place?
I think maybe what happened was the force of the sudden stop of the blade getting wedged caused the drawbar to loosen up. This allowed the facepiece with the blade screwed to it to remain still after the jam occurred, while the shaft continued to turn. That's my theory anyhow.
