Ripped a 12-foot sheet of plywood and the saw blade decided to quit halfway through

Happened Tuesday afternoon on a job over in Sharonville. I'm cutting down birch ply for a built-in bookcase and about 6 feet in the blade starts smoking and just stops spinning. Motor's still running but the arbor nut had worked itself loose somehow. Spent 20 minutes finding a crescent wrench in the bottom of my truck, tightened it back up, and finished the cut. That blade now has a weird wobble though. Has anyone else had a nut back off mid-cut or did I just get a bad batch of luck?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth2767d ago

Honestly, I used to think "just tighten it down good" was enough for any saw blade issue. I was dead wrong. Last year I had almost the exact same thing happen with my table saw on a 10-foot rip of melamine. The nut backed off so slowly I didn't even feel it until the blade started dragging and left burn marks everywhere. I found a loose arbor nut is usually from not using a washer or from the threads getting gummed up with pitch. Mine wobbled too after that and I had to toss the blade, it wasn't worth trying to balance it back out. Now I check that nut every time I swap blades and give it a good snug with a proper wrench, not just hand tight.

the_rowan7d ago

Has anyone checked if the arbor itself got damaged too @beth276?

ross.lily7d ago

beth276 mentioned the blade wobble after the nut backed off and I read somewhere that once a blade gets that wobble it's pretty much done for. Something about the arbor hole getting wallowed out even a tiny bit makes it impossible to run true again. I tried running a wobble blade once because I was cheap and it left a rough edge that took forever to sand smooth. Sounds like that blade is toast, sorry man.