so... lemme ask a question of folks with lots of table saw experience...

[mistermikev]

so I'm not a newbie on the tablesaw... but until I recently got one I hadn't used one in maybe 15 years. 

At one point I worked on one daily... but never much more than typical 3/4 hardwood and a lot of mdf.  I did cut solid surface on them... but absolutely never any figured wood. 

so, I've been getting along with my new tablesaw fairly well.  I bought a freud glue line rip that is designed for 2"+ hardwood.  (It works fantastic... I wouldn't have believed that you could cut with a table saw, not sand, and glue up... but it's true.) 

while running purpleheart/maple/purpleheart thru it... it unnerved me a few times by feeling like it wanted to pull the material into it.  I did not like that at all.  it is fairly heavily figured purpleheart, and well flamed maple.  IDK if it was pulling it in or just vibrating weird but it def got my attention.

is this normal on a tablesaw?  It felt a LOT like when  router wants to take off on figured wood so I'm guessing it's par for the coarse.  I was able to hold on to it no problem... but if I had been just using a push stick (not that I would do that on 2" material) I don't know what would have happened.

[Bizman62]

I'm no expert either but I've noticed that when working with thick pieces of hard woods the blade seems to push back rather than cut.

[mistermikev]

5 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I'm no expert either but I've noticed that when working with thick pieces of hard woods the blade seems to push back rather than cut.

it is possible that this was pushing back... but it really didn't feel like that to me.  I was going much slower than I'd go with reg 3/4 stock... and yet my purpleheart didn't burn (it is notorious for that).  it was sort of a 'rub' vibration.  the blade did get slowed by the wood... it's only a 1hp or 1.5hp motor... but it didn't feel like it was 'choking' or anything.