-> constantantly in rec.woodworking. Read that newsgroup
-> for more than a week and someone will ask exactly
Make sure there's plenty of room in your mail spool. It's a high
traffic group.
-> 3) Final step down is a bench type saw. These are generally
-> considered to be junk by those who claim to be woodworkers,
-> but have their share of happy owners. Expect to pay $70-150US.
My Dad is a table saw fan. I went for the radial arm because I was
doing remodeling and roof trusses mostly, but on occasion I need to rip
a board. I've been doing it with a circular saw and temporary fixtures.
Can't haul the board over to my Dad's, he'd hassle me too much about
it... for my limited requirements for a table saw one of the benchtop
models would be perfectly adequate.
Having looked at a few in the last year or so I've noticed quality of
construction varies tremendously. A friend bought one and returned it
because it could not be adjusted to make a straight cut. Given that a
majority of the small saws seem to be cheaply made, I'd only buy from a
place with a return policy.
-> 5) As someone on shop-talk already mentioned, you can improve
-> most saws by going to an aftermarket fence. These will cost
-> several hundred dollars.
It's not that hard to design and build your own. I'm more of a metal
guy, but you could get useful life out of hardwood. The hassle is in
aligning the damned thing.
-> 6) Plan to add some type of dust collection system if you
-> want to continue healthy breathing. That starts another
-> discussion with almost as many opinions and options as
-> the basic table saw issue.
My older Craftsman radial arm works okay with a shop vac, though I
usually just use a piece of heavy cardboard as a backstop. My Dad's
ca~1970 De Walt radial arm is insanely designed to shoot the sawdust
right in your face, and even the vac doesn't help much. His ca~1970
Craftsman table saw neatly drops 95% of its sawdust down into its
enclosed bottom; we've never even considered a dust collector for it.
-> Thus far I haven't used it much. It wants 17 amps for its
-> 1.5 horse motor. My shop vac wants 11 amps. My basement
-> shop is wired for a single 15 amp circuit!
That is ordinary enough. You might be able to drop an extension from
one of the lesser-loaded wall sockets up above. And if you're lucky you
might have some unused capacity in the breaker box.
I have three 30-amp circuits in my shop, with alternating outlets, each
identified by black, beige, or white wall plates. I went nuts on the
shop; our 1942 house has one 15 amp breaker for the outlets (one per
room!) and one 15 amp breaker for all the lights (wall mounted, one per
room...) Needless to say it's Electrical Hell...
I made the ram air carb bonnet for TRX out of 1" pine boards and 1/8"
paneling. It's covered with fuelproof black epoxy, but the wood grain
still shows through and attracts various comments at the track... but
it weighs less than three pounds, was made out of scrap, and only took a
few hours to make, mostly matching the curved top to the underside of
the hood. I'd have had to make molds to do one in fiberglass, and I'd
probably still be hammering if I'd tried to do one from aluminum.
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