This last weekend was a red-letter day for me, I upgraded to a cabinet saw! I’ve been looking to get a new saw for a while now. I looked at just about every saw out there. I knew I wanted a cabinet saw and at least a 3HP motor. I also wanted a useable blade guard, riving knife and a decent mobile base.

I had narrowed my search to either the new Delta Unisaw or Powermatic PM2000. SawStop was always on the list, but at the time I was doing my research they only had the Industrial Cabinet Saw and the Contractor model available. So, I had decided on the new Unisaw. The PM2000 was nice machine, but I really didn’t like the built-in casters system it had. I wanted to love the PM2000, but the new Unisaw won me over. I was just about ready to pull the trigger on buying the Unisaw, but then the economy took a nosedive. With jobs hanging in the balance I decided to wait.

In some ways I’m glad I waited. During that time SawStop came out with their Professional Cabinet Saw (PCS). This new saw competes directly with the new Unisaw and PM2000, in price and features. I took a long hard look at the PCS. For about the same amount of money, I could get the PCS with similar features and the SawStop safety feature. It really didn’t take me long to decide on the SawStop.

There are those who “criticize” the SawStop feature, saying it will give people a false sense of security. I’ll only say one thing about the SawStop feature. When has any new safety feature every caused more accidents? This excludes the complete moron factor, which there is no protection for or from.

I had planned to take pictures as I assembled the saw, but that just didn’t happen. Once past the initial box opening, the camera was forgotten.

Assembly of the saw was pretty easy and straightforward. The manual and other documents that come with saw were excellent. There are some great thinkers at SawStop, because they think about the small stuff.  How they packaged their nuts and bolts is brilliant.

You can see in the picture, that each group color-coded and each item in the group is numbered. The instructions tell you, you need so many #5 bolts from the Blue section. I can’t tell you how many tools I have bought, that just some with a bag of stuff and you have to figure out which screw or bolt you need. How may times have you put something together and discovered you used the wrong bolt and have to take the whole thing apart! This didn’t happen with the SawStop.

I only encountered on problem while putting the saw together. When attaching the cast-iron extension wings, I couldn’t get a perfect alignment. The front and back of the wing would line up flush with the top, but center “dipped” down a small amount. My brother said you can “flex” that into alignment, with a jack or clamps. I looked at him with some disbelief. I never saw cast-iron as being “flexible”. I wasn’t too concern at that time, I thought I would just call SawStop and see what they had to say. Today I shot SawStop an email, and within 20 minutes I had my response. They sent me instructions on how to “flex” the wings into alignment. I sent my brother an apologetic email, saying I will never doubt him again. They aren’t off by much, I’ll try the alignment procedure this weekend. I also need to check the alignment of the blade and fence, then it will be ready for action. I did a few test cuts and the saw is smoooooth. I don’t think I could be more pleased.

After I get a chance to use the saw on some real projects, I’ll post an update on how I think the saw performs. Below are some pictures of the saw, for your enjoyment.

Earlier this year I took a class from Rob, at our local Woodcraft store.  Besides being a very fun day of dovetailing, Rob had a prototype of the Dovetail Saw he was going to produce.  You can find all of the details about the saw at his site, including a video where Rob talks about the saws features.  One feature that might not appeal to people, is the martial Rob chose to use for the handle.  He is using a resin compound, like Corian for the handles.  When he said that in the class, I thought “why did he go and do that”!  Then I used the saw and felt the difference.  I like the wood handles I have on my saws now, but the resin handle on his saw was “fatter/thicker”.  It felt so nice in my hand.  I quickly overcame my issue of the resin handle.  Getting a chance to use the saw, made it even easier for me to decide I wanted one when they started to ship.  The saw has some weight to it and is well balanced in your hand.  It cuts fast and smooth.  It was my birthday a few days ago, and I got some cash as a gift.  So, Happy Birthday to me!
Rob is offering the saw with two different handles, Granite and Bone.  The Granite really doesn’t appeal to me, so I ordered the Bone handle.  At the Woodcraft store he had a Black handle that looked incredible.  I wish he offered the Black handle.  Not sure how soon the saw will arrive, but I will post something as soon as it does.

My current miter gauge is an Osborne miter gauge, like the one Norm uses on his show.  When I researched miter gauges, about 4 years ago, I settled on the Osborne.  I knew little about what I wanted and needed, and if it was good enough for Norm it should be good enough for me.  After using it for these past 4 years, honestly I can say I really don’t like it.  It’s very difficult to get an accurate setting, outside of the few preset stops.  Also, recently I started to have problems getting a perfect 90° cut!

So I started to recalibrate the miter gauge, and found it would not stay square.  I discovered the problem was in the locking screw/bolt at the rear of the gauge.  The way you adjust this gauge, you loosen a top nut with an Allen Wrench then turn a offset hex nut.  This allows you change the “squareness”, by a small amount in either direction.  You then tighten up the top nut to lock it down.  The problem I found, I couldn’t tighten that top nut enough to hold it square.  Even a small amount of pressure on the outer arm would knock it out of square.  If I tried to really tighten down top nut, I would move it out of square while tightening.  Something was wrong, so I tried to contact the manufacture.  After a couple unanswered emails to the Osborne Company, I felt it was time to look for a new miter gauge.

I did quite a bit of research this time.  A few things I was looking for were:  it needed to accurate, finer setting for the desired angle, and a reasonably long fence with a stop.  There were a few that met these requirements.  Although, I kept coming back to the Incra miter gauges.

A fellow woodworker I know has the Incra 1000SE, and he is happy with his.  I was able to see the 100SE up close and give it a try.  I was pretty happy with its quality and features.  The 1000SE has stops at every 5°, plus a few other common angles.  This would have been fine for my needs, but Incra has come out with their new 1000HD (High Definition).  It has stops at every 1° (or 180 stops).  It really wasn’t that much more than the 1000SE, so I splurged.

I won’t bore you with the steps it took to set it up.  If you plan to buy one yourself, the instructions that come with it were very good.  I will say it was pretty easy to set up, and dial it to 90°.  Along with setting up the miter gauge, I took the time to check my table saw alignment.  I did this quite awhile ago when I first got my table saw, but have learned some new things about table saw alignment.  It was a good thing I checked, because it needed some work.

Awhile ago, I talked about Hendrik Varju’s DVD “Revelations on Table Saw Set-up & Safety”, and I still think this is the best instructional DVD out there on table saw set up and safety.  Hendrik’s approach is a little different than most, but in his DVD he shows and explains why he does things the way he does.  I was convinced by his arguments and have started to implement his style of table saw operation.  In the photos you might noticed the miter gauge is set up on the right side of the blade.  This is one of Hendrik’s deviation from “mainstream” table saw conventions.  The other is how the blade is aligned.

Normal wisdom says to get the blade perfectly parallel with the miter slot.  Hendrik argues this is nearly impossible to achieve, and because of blade runout this is not desirable.  Hendrik advocates canting the blade .003” to .005” from front to back.  The back of the blade is canted to the left.  This is one of the reasons he sets his miter gauge to the right of the blade.  When making a cut this way, you can stop your cut without having to go past the full length of the blade.  Then when you turn your saw off, you have eliminated the possibility of the runout causing the blade to wobble and nick your work piece.  This used to happen to me a lot, but not anymore.

I’ve only scratch the surface of what Hendrik covers in his 5 DVD set.  I highly recommend the DVDs to anyone who is new to table saws or wants to learn Hendrik’s approach to setting up and using a table saw.

The first is a set Drawer Lock Chisels.  These are very specialized chisels that I haven’t seen for sale, except for antique ones.  There is a nice video on YouTube that shows how they are used.  Now I just need a project to justify buy this new tool!

The other new tool is a pair of Drawbore Pins.  Again an almost impossible tool to find these days.  I have used the Drawbore technique on a couple of my projects.  This technique makes an incredibly tight and strong joint.  Because I couldn’t buy any Drawbore Pins at the time, except for expensive antiques, I had to make mine.  I followed an article Christopher Schwarz wrote on the subject.  You can see the blog I wrote on making my pins over on Lumber Jocks.

I love snow, but our area really isn’t equipped to handle this much snow.  Most things just shut down.  Most people around here act and talk like they have driven in snow their entire life, but the number of 4-wheel drives you see in the ditches tells a different story.  I used to ski a lot, and at the time I owned a Camaro.  I will say, if you can drive a Camaro up snowy mountain passes you can drive anything in the snow.  Yes I know, I’m sounding like one of those know-it-all snow drivers.  The rest of the Camaro owners out there can back me up on this one.  Now I own a Toyota Tundra, which does much better in the snow .

With it being so cold, I haven’t been able to do much in the shop.  I only have a small space heater for the shop, and it doesn’t help much with this kind of cold.  I had plans to insulate the garage/shop this last summer but I didn’t get to that project.  I’m really regretting that now.  I will not make that same mistake this next spring/summer.

What’s better than buying a new tool?

Getting one for free!  This Saturday I had a visit from the UPS truck.  A small box was dropped off, from Marc and Matt over at Wood Talk Online.  I was the proud winner of a new Veritas Side Rabbet Plane.

Seeing that the shop is pretty cold, I haven’t had a chance to try it out.  Once I do, I will post a complete review.  For now it’s just an early Christmas present, I get to fondle.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone

I got everything set up on the router table, and cut the first couple of groves.  I was in the middle of one of the other groves and my router turns off.  I thought what the heck?  I flipped the power switch off and on and nothing.  I’ve never tripped a breaker before with my router, and it was only a shallow ¼” grove.  Sure enough the breaker tripped.  I gave the router and cord a quick once over, and scratched my head for a while.  Flipped the router back on and I saw sparks this time!!  I’m trying to keep this a G-rated blog, but some really bad words came out of my mouth!

I pulled the router out from under the table and discovered that one of the caps that holds the brushes in had come off.  Sorry for the blurry picture.

When the brush came out it contacted the metal case of the router and shorted out.  You might just be able to make the burn marks on the router.

I looked all over the shop floor for the cap, and finally found it under my bandsaw base.  I was able to get the brush back in and the cap back on.  I also checked the other cap and it was loose too!  I never thought about checking these caps before.  You might want to check yours.

I was worried I had done some real damage to my router, but I plugged it and powered it up.  I may have dodged a bullet on this one, it spun up and worked fine for the rest of the groves.

Is there Hand Tool Karma, I think so!

I had a chance to try this plane out at a woodworking show recently, and to be honest I wasn’t really impressed with it. Although looking back, I have to say the condition in which I got to use the tool wasn’t ideal. After reading countless positive reviews by other woodworkers, I knew I hadn’t given the tool a fair chance. I knew Lee Valley had great customer service, and if I really didn’t care for it after giving it a try, I could return it.

Well, I don’t think I’ll be sending it back. It worked much better in my shop, after a good sharpening of the blade. The plane cut really smooth. It was easy to set up. It feels comfortable in your hand. The blade adjustment is very easy.  The depth gauge is easy to set and stays in place.

The only think I will say against the plane, is that it feels a little “tippy”. I’ve never used a Plow Plane before, so it might just be me getting used it. The fence seems a little small in “width”, but is plenty long enough. You can add an auxiliary fence to it, and I will most likely do this for some added support.