Howdy gents. I'm looking to buy a brand new benchtop table saw for my little shop. I'd like to hear some opinions about my various options. Also, would I need to buy a new blade, or would the stock blade be good enough nowadays?
Thanks a zillion!
Ned J. Clarke
Hate to be a shill for a vendor but... I've never seen a stock blade or most replacement blades that can hold a candle to the Forrest WWII.
Just one man's opinion.
bob g.
Ned J. Clarke wrote:
In alt.woodworking Ned J. Clarke wrote: : Howdy gents. I'm looking to buy a brand new benchtop table saw for my : little shop. I'd like to hear some opinions about my various options. : Also, would I need to buy a new blade, or would the stock blade be good : enough nowadays?
: Thanks a zillion!
I've never owned one, but the Ryobi BT-3000 has a quite devoted following. I think there's Yahoo newsgroup devoted to it.
All the others, by Delta, Skil, etc. are pretty much not liked by anyone trying to do precise woodworking.
-- Andy Barss
And a web site:
LD
I had a Delta bench saw for a couple years before its shortcomings exceeded mine. ;-) I upgraded to a Griz contractor saw, which I really like. If I had had the space I would have kept the Delta as it worked very well for some things.
I recommend you get a good thin kerf blade and blade stabilizers. The thinner kerf takes less horsepower. Keep the stock blade to put back on when you sell it... That's what I did. ;-)
-- Mark
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:33:06 -0500, Robert Galloway calmly ranted:
And they cost -only- half the price of the benchtop table saw.
According to Charlie Self, the Freud F410 is less than half the price and just about as good. Put it on a Grizzly G0444 and he'd have himself a nice starter setup;until he hit the steeper end of the slope and headed back for the Griz G1023S.
Goto
And yet, the BT-3000 still strikes me as sort of pointless. It's as big as a contractor's saw, so space saving is a wash. It's in the same ballpark price wise as lower end contractor's saws. It's aluminum. It has that confangledy flabbing sliding table instead of miter slots. I think it has a screaming universal motor too. Think. It's been a long time since last February.
I looked at those hard because of all the happy BT3000 users, but I wound up buying a (Crapsman) contractor's saw. I recommend one over any benchtop or lighter duty machine hands down. They're heavy as a dickens, as large as an aircraft carrier, with 12 acres of table surface, and realllllllllly unwieldy in a tiny shop like mine, but it's still worth it. My benchtop (Skil 3400) was such a POS.
I concede that the BT would be much better than that Skil, but in my shop the biggest question was size. The BT doesn't save you much of any room at all. The only small shop advantage I can see is that it's probably light enough to move around a bit. With 13,000 pounds of iron in my way, and only 12" of clearance between the fence rails and my workbench, I do miss having that little bitty Skil out there.
Until I fire this thing up and cut off a bunch of stuff, and leave the cutoffs on the table because they ain't goin' nowhere. It's amazing what a difference 13,000 pounds of iron makes dampening vibrations. It's also whisper quiet, with practically the only noise being from the saw teeth chewing up wood. I love this thing! Benchtop saws suck so much.
Everything else being equal, I say sacrifice something else and get a real saw. Benchtops are good for cutting the ends off tuba fores. If you realllly work hard at it with enough jiggery and patience, you can do good work on one (my chess box hasn't exploded yet, and I glued the board up straight off that POS saw) but in terms of the joy factor, it just isn't worth the frustration in retrospect. I wish I had dumped my benchtop a long time ago. I just suck in my butt when I squeeze past it, and life is good.
I just bought a Delta 10" benchtop for my small garage. I use it mainly for ripping 1x4's since it is not good for anything else. Worst $100 ever spent, but I got what I paid for. When funds are available I will throw this in the garbage and get a Grizzly contractor or cabinet saw.
The Freud F410 is about the same cost as the WWII.
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:19:23 -0400, Nova calmly ranted:
I got my HF set of Silver & Demings out yesterday, opened the HF box containing the 1/2" chuck for my trusty B&D 3/8" VSR, installed it, chucked a 3/4 S&D bit in it, and proceeded to drill out the 60T and
40T HF blades to fit onto Dina. All went smoothly, cheap bits thru cheap metal. I sure wouldn't want to make my living with HF bits. I just hope it lasts through the entire dado set...Anyway, Dina now has a new set of teeth.
Ouch! I bought my F410 last year from a local dealer (CB Tools San Jose) for about $60. Perhaps they get a better deal than amazon?
I had the delta bench top saw. It was complete junk. The origial blade was even worse. I was able to live with it through the completion of a little table though. So I'd say that they are usable. Accuracy and repeatability are an issue though, as is power. I had a real hard time cutting through 2.5" of poplar with this saw. I was able to get about 1/2" worth of a stacked dado set into the saw. It was dangerious though because the throat plate was flat metal held in with sheet metal screws. I had to operate the stack without a throat plate. Very dangerous. If I were you, I'd head over to grizzly and pick up their entry level contractor's saw. That way, you could upgrade to a better fence, cast iron extensions, and maybe even a new motor as things progress.
brian
I don't know about that... I've got the Delta 10" deluxe tabletop saw with the extension wing, and my only two real complaints are that if I want to upgrade the fence, I'm going to have to make one myself, because the table is too short to accept an aftermarket one, and the arbor is too short for a dado stack (but it will still use a wobble dado)
It may be that you are talking about their "standard" 10" benchtop, which I'll agree looked like a piece of junk in the store, but the deluxe model is a few steps up in quality as far as I can tell.
I had a lot of trouble whipping it into shape and learning how to use it within it's limitations, but now that it's all set up, and I've got about a hundred hours in with it, it really is a pretty good little saw for the price. Vibration is not a factor because I built my own steel frame to mount it on, and then laid concrete blocks in the bottom of it. The whole thing is nice and solid.
Same thing as the Skil. It's almost an identical saw. Not only what you've said, but it's also damn near impossible to make a zero-clearance insert for the thing. I never did come up with anything that worked.
(Of course my Crapsman contractor's saw is another variation on the same theme. Caveat emptor. Standard oval hole doesn't mean it takes a standard oval part. The casting on this one means the new insert has to be quite complicated, with all kinds of little stuff routed out of it. Cutting a piece of oval plywood and slapping it in the hole ain't gonna do it. I never have gotten one of those fitted right either. )
It's too damn BIG to be a benchtop saw though, and it isn't all that light either.
Personally, I'd look for an old Craftsman benchtop tablesaw, the kind that has the cast iron top and trunnion and the motor hangs off the back. All the direct drive benchtop saws I have dealt with have been loud as hell, underpowered and flimsy.
Dewalt DW744:
I _OWN_ a DW744 bench top (As opposed to merely having an opinion about it). Other than the distance between the front and the blade, I love it. The fence is excellent, accurate, and stays put. Dust collection is pretty good with a shop vac. Light enough to move around, heavy enough to stay solid when properly clamped down. GET ROLLER STANDS, you'll need them. Yes, it's screaming loud. Get Peltor WorkTunes. Nice paddle switch. Follow the directions for getting it tuned, very easy to do. Mine was dead-on out of the box, except for the fence guage, which had to be re-zeroed.
This is my first saw, I've had it for a year. I knew going into it that I would "Cry again" and eventually buy another saw. But, I knew that it would be small and portable, and that one day when I buy a big, heavy, immobile hunk of steel, this saw will still be able to be thrown in the back of the pickup or will dutifully hold an old blade for cutting tubafours.
Blades (for this saw): The stock blade that comes with it is very good for ripping 2X4's and cedar fencing. Don't try it on ply.
I have a Freud TK306 ($30 at lowes) which works incredible on plywood and crosscuts on this saw.
I own the $20 8" stacked dado from HF and use it on the saw. Great dado for the money, wouldn't use it when the dado shows. I can spin
3/4" dadoes at 3/8" depth in plywood without problem on the DW744.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.