To all:
When I use my hand held electric jigsaw, made by the people that sell mostly yellow tools, I can never seem to get a perpendicular cut in 2 by or thicker woods. The bottom of the blade always deflects to the right. I make sure all adjustments are at proper 90 degrees and the proper blade is installed. I try feeding at various speeds, always making sure the tool rests properly on the surface of the wood, but can never get good perpendicular cuts.
I end up resorting to a hand held circular saw for most of the cut and a hand saw to finish the cuts.
Am I asking the impossible from a jig saw?? Is it a blade TPI issue ??
Any insights will be appreciated.
Replies
It can be done, to a reasonable degree of satisfaction.
What you have to do is feel the drift of the lower part of the blade. Forget the base of the saw, let the blade do the work, and don't force it. Watch the blade and adjust your feed rate and saw angle to the curve.
What he said.
Don't force it, the harder you push on the saw the more the blade is going to wander around, let the blade cut at its own pace, make sure your using a good blade, they are usually a little thicker and therefore a little stiffer.
Cheap thin blades will wander more
As CAG said, it's mainly a blade stiffness issue. Wider and thicker blades will help, twang them a little before you buy to find the stiffest ones. Some other options: For straight line cuts, going to the circular saw as you've done already is a good idea. If you need to make some turns, the main reason for a jig saw, you can get a lot truer perpendicular to the surface by going to a band saw. But of course that only helps if the work piece can be taken to the saw. If the stiffest blades you can find don't help enough, you might want to upgrade to a bigger recip saw, like a sawzall. And as has been said, work at the natural pace of the saw, don't force it too fast, or let it stall and heat from friction.
-- J.S.
Buy the Festool jigsaw! I got a chance to use it last week at a woodworking show. There was a big hunk of 2" maple, I was cutting curves freehand with it-perfectly freaking square!!! No deflection, zero.
My bosch can never do that. The secret is the blade is captured by 2 pcs. of carbide so it cant deflect. The bad news it is 250 smackers. ...but when the bosch dies I'm all over it.
What is happening is that the blade is being deflected by the grain of the wood. In other words, the grain is not exactly vertical to the top surface and the bottom part of the blade is unsupported. Thus if the grain slants to the right [top to bottom] the blade will hit one of the hard rings and wander off to the right.
You might want to try a router if this is critical to you.
~Peter
Wait! There's more!
If you act now we'll include...
is the blade new and sharp ???
Does it wander the same way if you cut lefthanded instead of right???
Excellence is its own reward!