Hi John,
The 40 degree angle is closer to what I measured when I looked at the angle between the blade guide support's square dovetail and its body.? That's part #84 in my Harbor Freight owner's manual.? It's called the "lower blade guide bracket seat" in my manual.? But I wasn't sure if the plane of the bracket seat's body is anywhere close to vertical (when the body frame part #62 is horizontal).? Apparently it is.
I also saw that when the blade is twisted to be vertical the plane of its wide dimension passes through the M8 hole in the bracket seat.? That makes a lot of sense!? However, it doesn't seem to be exactly parallel to the long axis of the dovetail.? ?Maybe that's to account for the necessary clearance between the saw blade and guide bearings?? With zero clearance the blade and guide bearing axes would be parallel, but adding clearance would result in needing some additional "twist offset" on the part of the blade guide.? More clearance = more angular offset.? But how large is that angle?
Knowing that the bearings are 9mm long, for .005" clearance I calculate less than 1 degree. .010" would come to 1.6 degrees.? Not much to worry about I'd say.? So the dovetail alignment issue may be an observation error on my part (I just eyeballed it), or perhaps a minor design error.
Mark
