Cleaning thinset from tile saw

[highup]

Even if he does excellent work I would bet he spends a lot of time cleaning. Or pays his help to deal with the mess.

Either way, nice score! I can't tell you how many tools I have because someone just bought a new one instead of fixing the old one. I have probably 5-6 duofast carpet staplers because they needed a new cord! Lol.

Definitely pays to be handy!

I'm the recipient of three of these exact same saws. One of them needs a new gearbox that cost a little over 100 bucks maybe with buying an additional bearing it might total 120 bucks to make it operational.
The second saw was dropped (upside down) on the aluminum arm that holds the motor. There's a small ding in the top of the arm but obviously, this thing got dropped hard enough that it tweaked.
I managed to loosen every screw and do every adjustment possible to get the arm to move. Now it makes good cuts but it looks funny because the rail is clear over to one side and looks out of whack visually. That said it still usable and makes perfectly good cuts.
This latest saw needed the blade tightened to stop the wobbling.
I'm thinking to myself.
if there's a nasty rattling noise coming from the back of my car.....
...should I throw the car away or just look around and discover I need to tighten the lug nuts?
Since it obviously wasn't working the shop bought another saw to replace it with...... Same saw.
This is DeWalt seems to be one of the most highly rated and popular saws out there.
Instead of repairing saw number one, I'm thinking that maybe I can take the top part of the arm off of the first, then put that on saw number two, the one that was dropped, and then realign the guides in the positions they're supposed to be. If that worked there would be two perfectly good working saws.
Between the three songs I probably have a couple of days of labor cleaning them up and fixing them.
Maybe I should make a deal with the shop and sell one back for a small fee so they have a backup.
..........a backup unit to be destroyed just like the other ones

 

[C.J.]

My saw fell out of my van on its head like the one you have and I was able to tweak it back to make straight cuts again. Took me maybe an hour of fiddling with it but in the end it all worked out. Now it just sits on a shelf in the garage cus the going rate here for floor tile is $2.50/ ft. I just laugh at that.

 

[highup]

My saw fell out of my van on its head like the one you have and I was able to tweak it back to make straight cuts again. Took me maybe an hour of fiddling with it but in the end it all worked out. Now it just sits on a shelf in the garage cus the going rate here for floor tile is $2.50/ ft. I just laugh at that.

I was envisioning anchoring it to a slab, then tweaking it with a comealong. Never got that far.

 

[C.J.]

I adjusted the rails like you did. I suppose I coulda loosened the 4 head/ neck bolts and tried adjusting it that way but that woulda been too simple.

 

[highup]

I loosened the top 4, the lower 4 and even had to drive the two allignment pins out.
.....then I tweaked it all and tightened the bolts.
The allignment is at it's maximum max.
It's a tweakers saw.

 

[Tile Tom]

Spray the bolts with a little kroil or pb blaster and let it set overnight. Repeat the process until you get it to budge.
Can't imagine all three bolts are cross threaded. Probably just seized up from all the slop all over it.

 

[highup]

Spray the bolts with a little kroil or pb blaster and let it set overnight. Repeat the process until you get it to budge.
Can't imagine all three bolts are cross threaded. Probably just seized up from all the slop all over it.

No there wasn't any slop on em, it's just steel welding to aluminum and never having been turned.
The fix would be cut off the plastic handles and use some vice grips to twist them back and forth with some penetrant on them.
On the two plastic knobs that control up and down and the angle, I suppose if I carefully cut those off, I might just have to replace the two handles. I'm thinking now maybe there's a metal insert in the knob that's seized. It's not, like it's not fixable. I just didn't get around to messing with that. That's for another day when the weather gets better.