A Line It Basic, Table Saw Alignment Calibration Tool

I have a Laguna 18BX bandsaw, and use a 1.25" resaw king carbide tipped blade for resaw work. I've noticed that over time the fence will go out of alignment, and when I try to resaw, I'll have issues if I don't properly align the fence to prevent any drift. I often resaw at the maximum height of 16 inches, so any blade drift compounds problems, especially on a long board that I'm resawing. I used to just use a square and set the fence that way, but this dial gauge is purpose built for this kind of alignment, and it made checking for parallel quick and easy. The only thing I have to account for is the actual deflection of the fence from sideways pressure since I also use a bow resaw featherboard with the 10 inch extension to apply lateral force to hold the wood firmly against the fence, and this causes the fence to deflect away from the blade at the rear. This is no fault of this dial indicator though, and something that I just need to account for when I'm using the dial indicator to set the fence properly. This wasn't the cheapest option, but it does feel well built and consistent. It was easy to assemble and figure out how to use and adjust the miter bar. Everything tightens down with confidence too, which is nice. Overall, I'm very pleased, and am glad to have it on hand!

Before I bought my table saw, I thought it worked like this: you turn it on; you run a board through the blade; you turn it off. Then I bought a saw on craigslist (however it's spelled). It came with an Incra LS rip fence and router table. What the heck is that for? Soon, I was browsing back-issues of Shopnotes, reading about tenoning jigs, crosscut sleds and tapering jigs. So much to learn! And then one day, I read an article about tuning up your table saw. Huh? You could tune it? To what? A-440? Of course not. But the blade, I discovered, must be parallel to the miter slots, and the 90° stop position should align the blade exactly 90° to the table top. Was my saw in tune? I had to read up on banging something called a "trunion" with a hammer and a block of wood to parallel-ize the blade to the miter slot. Was my leg being pulled? Nope, that is the tried-and-true method. So, how to tell when I could stop beating on my saw? How will I know the blade is parallel to the miter slot? That's where the A-Line-It enters the shop. It rides in the miter slot and positions a dial gauge against the saw blade. Mark a spot on the blade, between the teeth, and rotate to the front of the saw. Put the stem of the dial gauge on the dot and zero the dial. Then rotate the blade towards the rear of the saw and move the A-Line-It so the stem of the dial gauge is again on the dot. If the reading is zero, congratulations! The beatings can stop! But if the dial does not read zero, well, it's back to the hammer for you. So, I banged and checked the front and rear positions. I banged and checked the front and rear positions again. I banged and checked the front and rear positions over and over, until they were as close to the zero as possible. I gingerly tightened the bolts holding the trunion and watched the dial. It changed slightly, and then went back to zero as I tightened one side and then the other. I slipped my new Incra miter gauge in the slot, laid down a block of 2 by 4, powered up the beast and ran the wood through the blade. Then I rotated one piece 180° and slid it up against the fresh cut. No gaps! No burn marks! I do not look forward to re-aligning my saw, using a hammer and block of wood. There is something called a P.A.L.S kit which supposedly makes the aligning process almost trivial, but I cannot speak to that yet. No matter what, the A-Line-It tool helped me put a song in my saw! The miter bars are machined aluminum, and vertically adjustable, so they should fit any depth of slot. Plus, there are spring-loaded bearings on the side of the miter bar to prevent slop. The included dial gauge is accurate to .001" (1/1000 of an inch!) which seem like way too much precision for my style of woodworking, but hey, if my saw is aligned to those tolerances, then everything I cut is better, right? Right! And for that reason alone, you should consider buying this tool. It isn't cheap, but you can save $20 if you have your own dial gauge.

This is a great product. The only negative is the adjustment screws that set the width for the track. They are too loose and come out of adjustment as you slide from one side of the blade to the other and back making the reading harder to get accurate. A set of plastic set screws would have been better as they tend to fit tighter in other accessories like miter gages.

I purchased this gauge to set up my new Sawstop. Some of the reviews had me worried and thinking that maybe I needed a much more expensive tool, but this has turned out to be a great. It was highly repeatable, and seems well made. Easy to use. Was able to get my Sawstop to within .002", and could have gotten even more accurate but that seemed to be the tolerance of the Sawstop blade I was measuring against. Afterwards I checked it out against my old Bosch table saw... The blade was pretty accurate but the fence was horrible... up to .045" off depending on where the far end of the fence decided to grab when I locked it down. I can see that to use my Bosch for woodworking, I'd need to set the fence with a square every time. After two thumb injuries that were fortunately recoverable, I decided I'd pushed my luck far enough and bought the Sawstop. Thanks in part to this tool and because of the new saw, I can now make accurate cuts with much less fiddling.

Excellent high quality calibration tool, used this to ensure table saw blade was as accurately aligned as I could get it. Resulting cut from Dewalt 7491 using full kerf Freud heavy duty rip blade on 2" thick walnut came our perfectly, no burn marks or rough cut.

Anyone that’s been serious in the woodworking game for long enough will tell you to stop chasing perfection at some point. I read a couple reviews that say the dial indicator is inaccurate and there are too many variables to make it inconsistent. Well, if you are trying to make a Space-X part, yeah, don’t buy this. But if you are trying to tune up your table saw, this is perfect. It took me about 10 minutes from opening box, throwing the directions in the trash, to tuning my miter slot to .0005 and my fence to +.002 away from the blade at the far end. No issues and I get square cuts. A review mentioned the slot that the miter bar has on it to accept the cross member allows too much play, if you tighten the screw well enough, it will hold steady and even if the cross member is at a microscopic angle, because it’s tight and won’t move, you will get a good read. One thing to note, it didn’t use the option of adjusting the miter bar to fit my track exactly. I just applied pressure down and to one side of the miter track and got a consistent read. I give it a 5. It worked great for setting up my table saw and I’m excited to test it out on the jointer.

This is fairly easy to set up as long as you follow the directions and have a little experience with calibration. I use it for my budget table saw because it vibrates so much and is cheap, it is often out of whack. It’s worth the money to be able to spend a few minutes on blade alignment and now that I have it set up, it slides right into my miter slot and I can even check my fence quickly. For me, it’s easy to read and dial in necessary alignments.

The A-Line-It basic kit worked wonderfully for dialing my SawStop PCS. I was also able to use it for adjusting my cheap Porter Cable jointer blades to a higher level of precision that they previously were adjusted to. I highly recommend this product.