Took me four hours of head scratching to figure out why my miter saw cuts were drifting

Finally realized the arbor on my old DeWalt was just slightly gummed up with pitch from some cedar I ran through it three months ago, anyone else get tunnel vision on complex fixes and miss the simple stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor.sean5d ago

Gummed up with pitch" - did you try acetone or just scrape it?

grace_campbell3d ago

Tried acetone first and just ended up with a sticky, smelly mess on my fingers and a slightly cleaner pipe. Figured I couldn't make it worse, so I switched to scraping with a flathead screwdriver and a lot of cursing. My grandpa's old workshop trick is to boil the thing in vinegar for 20 minutes, but that's a whole other adventure I'm not brave enough for yet. Your mileage may vary, but going slow with a plastic scraper saved my pipe from looking like I fought a raccoon with it.