Duh!

OK, I did a quick search online and discovered, to my chagrin, that I have never properly used my power miter saw. It seems you're supposed to SLOWLY lower the blade, then STOP the blade before raising it. And for all this time, I've been whacking it up and down as fast as I could. No wonder the ends of my cuts were always rough!

So I went back to the dowels and tried again. I kept the masking tape on, which does help a bit, then SLOWLY lowered the blade and stopped it. When I raised it back up, the checker had a much smoother edge! That was great, and I thought I would whiz through the rest of the dowel. But, alas, there's always something . . . It seems that when I lowered the blade too far, it shattered the checker! (Shades of table saw cutting!) If I didn't lower it far enough, it failed to cut the piece through. (And it's impossible to finish the cut smoothly once started.) So I had to waste about 10 checkers in the process of cutting the 28 I needed. (My stop block did work great, however!)

I ended up cutting about 10 extra checkers, just in case some get lost or broken. Now, I have to buy red spray paint (which I forgot about) to go with the black I already have. Hopefully, this afternoon, Amelia will watch some TV so I can do this without her seeing.

This has certainly delayed my project, but what can you expect--it's like my blog says, I'm learning how to do this one mistake at a time.