I ended up with this Delta saw because the saw I put on layaway the
36-732 got sold and the dealer showed me this one. worst mistake of my life. The thing had a cracked rear trunnion, the miter gauge knob handle was busted off the motor cover had a monster dent in it. I emailed Delta and complained been a week since I did. except for the mandatory thank you for writing us return message nothing!. Before you guys go off half cocked... the wooden packing crate was in good shape no damage. I found all this after I removed the packaging and plastic wrap.
I have no idea how this thing performs obviously. but judging from the wimpy cast pot metal trunnions I doubt this saw has any durability.
The motor weighs as much as a circus fat lady I can see the trunnions are wimpy compared to the trunnions on that newer Craftsman saw. The adjusting wheels are made of cheap cast pot metal I expect the bosses on the stems will wear out or break from usage. Only thing I can say postive about it is the table they seem to be hefty.
Interesting post... While over at the Rockler store recently, I asked one of the guys about the recent purchase of PC and Delta by Black & Decker. He said, "PC will be OK. Perhaps they can make Delta get their act together." If they don't, they will be in serious trouble because it is lots easier to lose customers that it is to get them back. Jim
I called the dealer and complained about the saw, he agreed to replace the saw at no charge meaning he would pick up the old saw and deliver a new one. The saw arrived in another wooden box which we uncrated to make sure there was no damage. After we inpected the parts we unloaded the saw from the guy's truck and moved it to its final resting place.. I can tell you and there are those that will swear and i mean swear... there can be nothing worse than trying to align the blade to the miter slots. I don't know how those wood workers before me could put up with that miserable aligning. its the worse!! I bought a set of those PALS alignment thingamajigs. Real pain in the ass to replace the stock trunnion bolts took hours because there was hardly any clearance.
I did manage to install the PALS , but it was just as miserable to adjust the devices because the little allen wrench had to fit EXACTLY and I mean EXACTLY into the hex hole you can't angle it in cause it won't go. The clearance was near impossible because you can't get access to the far side of the trunnion.. It helped that I had a set of Craftsman hex wrenches the ones with the rounded ball end that made it a lot easier to insert the hex slot. I wish Delta would have cut a slot in the cabinet to provide access to that backside of the trunnion. I think it's BS that nobody complained to those MBA marketing suits that ok'd that design why the hell did'nt they ask real bonafide woodworkers what they think... so stupid!!
Theres got to be a better way to align those damn trunnions. since this is a full cabinet why didn't they just go the full 9 yards and mount it on the cabinet like that craftsman saw??
sucks! I managed after a few hours to align the blade to the slots now the fun part begins...
I managed to attach the cast iron wings to the saw can't align the middle section of the wing because its lower than the saw top I got the ends aligned.. some what... the right side wing I had better luck with ,still not entirely flush with the saw top..
Blade guard.. splitter I can see why people hate using it really difficult to align properly the instructions suck because the photos are so bad nobody can really see anything I'm surprised its not printed in Chinese!
Hers' a fun tidbit the 2 knobs that screw onto the blade height / blade angle wheels...
get this the threaded shafts are not identical it's metric on the height adjuster shaft. And SAE on the blade angle shaft so one of the knobs is not going to screw on the shafts . STupid another call to Delta!!
Good LUck trying to get the poly belt on the pulleys there are no flanges on the pulleys to tell you where to line up ribs on the belt!
Stupid!
I hope you have a strong arm cause you have lift the motor up and try to put the belt on the pulleys its a one man job.. hilarious !! I asked my buddy to try he's a mechanic I never heard so many Goddamns in my life hahahaha!
After the the saw was assembled we tried to attach the Biesemeyer fence rail on that saw OMG! that rail is so Damn heavy and its attached to the front of the saw at only 2 points!!
2 lousy bolts holds this mother of all railroad trestle on!! Too bad the owners manual was not written specifically for this model saw
it made references to a unisaw of which this saw has some attributes mainly threaded holes in the table for the back rail, of which does not apply because this is a contractor saw which makes no sense because the parts they refer to do not apply but parts are substituted in for which they make no reference to... I guess woodworkers are a resource bunch they put up with so much crap I wish we could call those manufacturers on the carpet and tell them off!
I did manage to fire up the saw... It passed the nickel test amazing ly
it does make a weird noise a drone not a continous drone a moaning sound every couple of seconds almost like a sine wave is this normal??
I checked the pulleys tightened every nut .bolt and srew I could find don't know about that sound.
I expected better from Delta . That thing cost 1000 bucks.
My delta contractor's saw was much better, but not perfect. I have one of the US made ones. The blade was parallel to the miter slots out of the box. I had a hell of a time attaching the unifence though. It sounds similar to the problem you had. On the unifence, the front rail is a huge aluminum extrusion. The manual shows an easy installation technique with a t-slot machined in the side that mates to the saw. You would just have to slide the bolts down the t-slot, stick them through the holes on the cast iron table, and attach the nuts. That motion should have taken about 30 seconds to complete. Instead, it took me several hours to attach the rail. This is because instead of machining a t-slot in the rail like the picture in the manual shows, they just drilled two holes. This makes it impossible to get the bolts in. After much aggrivation, i discovered what they expected us to do now. You have to stick the nut in the now-sealed t-slot instead and magically line it up with the hole, while holding the rail up with your third hand, and attaching the bolt through the back side of the hole in the table. So to save some tooling costs, they sacrificed the t-slot.
My latest project involved removing the saw from the legs, and integrating it into a cabinet so I can have proper dust collection. I had a hard time getting my plywood panels square so that they would fit the saw, or so it seemed. As it turned out, it was the metal table saw cabinet that wasn't square. sheesh.
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