Building the Octagon Pt.3 Bad weather stopped play.

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Wednesday. [Yesterday's tomorrow.]  The forecast is for rain all day and the huge stack of timber is under lightweight tarpaulins. I want to make some 2"x6" cross braces to check the angles are true. I may use short lengths of scrap 4"x4" to make a scale model for the main posts. This will avoid handling and cutting very large and heavy objects outdoors in poor weather.

I just need to arrange enough space to support a 3.6m length of 2"x6" and still be able to use the saw in the workshop out of the rain. The height of the cutting table on the DeWalt miter saw is well above that of my B&D folding workbenches. I may need support packing to keep the timber in good contact with the saw table. 2"x6" will be too tall for the 12" saw blade so I shall have to lay the timber flat and lean the saw over to cut the 22.5° miters using the slide.

This is well with the capacity of the saw. Though I still have very little experience using the saw except for cutting thick aluminium for the heavy mounting. I also chopped off a length of 4"x4" which was quite effortless when I swapped back to the wood cutting blade from the specialist 100T aluminium cutting blade.

The rain was hampering my desire to uncover the timber to pull out some odd lengths. So I attacked the miter saw with a paint brush for the umpteenth time. The tiny metal flakes had gone everywhere except out of the exhaust pipe. Which is hardly surprising without a workshop vacuum cleaner attached.

However hard I brushed I could always find another teaspoon full of swarf somewhere. So I removed the fixed fence and lifted off the entire turntable to have a good clean underneath. The floor was soon covered in a pile of metal flakes of all sizes. I brushed diligently in every nook and cranny of the castings and still it rained fine metal.

Were it just sawdust it wouldn't matter so much but I worry about the wear and tear on the moving parts. At a rough guess I managed to remove half a liter [one pint] of swarf from the saw despite all my previous efforts to clean up thoroughly. There are just so many places for the metal dust to lodge. Using compressed air would probably have pushed the conducting swarf into the motor! Though it could be bagged for the exercise I suppose. Assuming I had compressed air to use for this purpose.

I discovered all sorts of interesting things while I was cleaning the saw. Like having an adjustable 22.5° miter stop in both directions of lean. The figures were hard to see on the black, angle stop tabs without good light and my reading glasses. DeWalt obviously knew I would be along soon to build an octagon. One minor worry is sawing accurate miters when the timber is bent or twisted. I shall have to be selective with the longer components.

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