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Opinion on this Excalibur Saw


Dave Monk

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1 hour ago, JimErn said:

more aggressive, is that after you set the EX up? adjusting the motor for front to back blade motion, etc etc

Or was it more like me, get it home, plug her in, let's do it - ROFL

Jim, I did tune  it yesterday as good as I am capable, considering my ignorance of the saw. The blade travel seems a bit strange to me. I have it adjusted where the top and bottom of the stroke are at the same point but in the middle of the stroke the blade goes back. Not knowing anything about the saw I don't know if that is good or bad.

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The motor has screws that you loosen to let you turn the motor. Put a piece of wood 1x1 or 2x2 behind the blade an run the saw. As it is running turn the motor until the wood doesn’t bounce with the blade hitting it. The back knob is to adjust the aggressiveness of cut. I set mine so the arm measurement is the same from arm to table at the back as the front. The front tension level you adjust by having the level in off position an turn the small set screw so it just touches the housing THEN turn 1/4” more. You will have same tension each time you use it. Hope the helps you. 

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9 hours ago, Dave Monk said:

Used them both today. My new EX is more aggressive than my Hegner.........I think I can cut finer detail on my Hegner. If I could only have one saw it would still be my Hegner. Time will tell.

Yeah that rocking motion will make it more aggressive and cut slightly faster.. with some practice you'll get use to that aggressive style.. I don't care where you zero that blade at.. that rocking motion will always make it more aggressive than a Hawk / Hegner  type saw... Something else you'll notice is.. blades will last about 25% longer in the Excalibur type saws... Many other sawers disagree with me on this subject.. but I feel they haven't run both saws long enough to be proficient at both saws.. 

My theory of blades lasting longer is... Hawk / Hegner saws have a more straight up / down motion.. when you feed the wood you push into the blade and being more straight up / down is creating a little more heat.. that rocking motion of the DeWalt / Ex type saws backs a portion of the blade out of the cut and away from that heat area to allow less heat.. My thinking anyway.. I may be wrong all the way around on this.. but will say and have seen many other topics of other users saying.. the same things...  

Not saying one saw is better than the other.. just they have many different well built designs to accommodate many different styles of cutting preferences..     

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I agree, the Ex is a little more aggressive than the Hegner, but it never bothered me enough to even hardly  notice.  If it does cause someone a problem they can nullify it by using less aggressive blades on the Ex.  I love both saws.  I use the same blades on each and just adjust my scrolling to which one I am using.  

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Blade travel/aggression are interesting because in practice, as soon as your work piece touches the blade, the blade maintains contact with the wood (no longer travels), so what you actually have is very quick varying pressure.  I do pretty fine detail on my coin cutting and detailed woodwork, so I don't think a tuned EX will cut any less detail than my Hegner.  The game changes on the EX if travel get's way out of kilter because that introduces a "hammering/vibration" which I can't deal with, and I have to stop and fix it.  If I leave that back knob alone, it stays tuned.  My particular EX has less vibration at my normal speed (3/4) than my Hegner, so that helps with accuracy.

There is one place where blade travel is incredibly bad, and that is with the use of spirals and moving the piece sideways.  I would probably always use my Hegner with spirals.  Once the EX is tuned, travel will be very little, but it can not be tuned to zero.

Edited by hotshot
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