I have an older Unisaw with an older Laguna large sliding table and I believe Leon made the best choice. Though I can flip my fence to either side, if you have a Festool FS track saw you can't cut as accurately with out a helper on the sliding table. If your down to the smaller pieces the incra fences should take care of that.
Mike M
I am happy with my decision. I obviously do have the track saw and do use it to cut plywood into manageable panels.
A Laguna sliding TS would have been nice had it not been for all the trade offs. I would have given up more features that I really wanted to have on a daily basis for a couple of nice features that I would have used occasionally.
I have no personal experience to validate this but it appears that the SawStop has better dust collection than any other table saw available. That would be a deciding factor for me.
Max
Many new saws these days do a much better job at capturing dust than those of 10 or so years ago. It now is common to capture the dust at the blade and channel it to a 4" hose to the exiting dust port. Basically the saws stay a lot cleaner inside. If you use the dust collection set up with the over arm blade guard, the SawStop probably does offer the best collection until you make a bevel cut. I have heard with a bevel cut the dust escapes. I probably will not use this particular set up so the dust that naturally escapes the bottom of the table will still end up on the top of the table.
Until the end of April SawStop is offering. at no additional charge, either the over arm dust collection or the Pro version of the mobile base if you buy a Pro version cabinet saw.
My Unisawr does a reasonable job of sucking dust, except that escapes from the top of the blade. There is a stripe on the floor[*] in front of the saw for "secondary" dust collection, after the job is done. ;-)
[*] The basement floor is carpeted but that will soon change.
Seems like nothing sucks in my shop but somehow the dust bucket on the Oneida Super Dust Gorilla gets full anyway. And the three shop vacs as well. sigh...
;-)
My worst offender is the Bosch SCMS. I gave up on collection and put a hood around it. The dust falls to the bottom and into a bucket. The SCMS dust collection port is really a horrible design. It's nowhere near where the sawdust is aimed and there is nothing to even try to direct it in the right direction. I like the saw but forget using it where dust will be an issue.
BTW, I have two DCs (one small HF with a Super Dust Deputy, and a 2HP Penn State with a trash can separator) and a couple of shop vacs. Like yours, it seems they're always full. ;-) ...though I'm just getting back into it.
I have yet to figure out how come there's more wood dust than there is wood when I finish a project.
And if the sawdust in the dust collector and the sawdust *not* in the dust collector were combined I couldn't get in the shop. :-(
Max
MaxD wrote in news:517dbe84$0$46973$c3e8da3 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.astraweb.com:
Decades ago, somebody had the same problem. In a fit of insanity, he glued the sawdust together, pressed it flat, and invented what we now know of as Particle Board.
Someone else came along, put a wood grain sticker on it and thus the flat-pack furniture industry was born.
Puckdropper
LOL.
You did well on your purchase, and if I need to change I will definitely look at the Sawstop. I got my Unisaw used with the sliding table, overhead guard, 51" Biesemeyer fence, mobile base, WWII, Tenon Jig, router insert in table, and spare zero clearance inserts for $1300. Unlike you I haven't exceeded my saws capabilities yet. But as I get older my respect for what could happen grows. I'm on disability from an industrial accident that taught me to appreciate every day you get to come home. No matter how careful you are you can be the victim of some one else's carelessness. The gentleman I got it from was doing cabinets in a 2 car garage and had purchased European multifunction tool for some jobs he had going on.
Sounds like you got one heck of a deal. I sold my saw for the exact same amount but with the saw, 15roller out feed, mobile base, and throat plates. I have been told that I got a good price for it. I continued to use it until I sold it. Had I bought the SawStop before selling I would have been more anxious to get rid of it. That said, I posted it with 2 pictures on a local woodworkers club web site and about 10 days later it was gone. I did not post until after I had decided on which saw would be the replacement.
I by no means exceeded the old saws capacity. Like you, I am getting older and realize that regardless of how cautious I I am around a TS I can do something that might not be safe, or some thing unforeseen can happen. The more I use a TS the more I realize how it can get you if you are not 100% on your game 100% of the time.
The switch to SawStop was only to decrease my chance of being seriously hurt if I do something we humans do, make a mistake.
SNIP
SNIP
I've been introducing my son to my shop over the past few months building a buffet for his dining room. A slow go as he only gives me a couple of hou rs on weekends. The key focus for me -- outside of spending some quality t ime with the lad -- is teaching him how to use TS, jointer, planer, BS, Dom ino, DP, etc., safely. Lo and behold, I used the sled to cut a couple of s hort boards and as I was drawing the sled back toward me, one of the cutoff s caught on the blade and cracked me a good one in the chest. Nothing like an abject lesson. Spent 10 minutes going over what occurred and what his idiot father did wrong.
Larry
You weren't using the fence in this operation, were you?
buffet for his dining room. A slow go as he only gives me a couple of hours on weekends. The key focus for me -- outside of spending some quality time with the lad -- is teaching him how to use TS, jointer, planer, BS, Domino, DP, etc., safely. Lo and behold, I used the sled to cut a couple of short boards and as I was drawing the sled back toward me, one of the cutoffs caught on the blade and cracked me a good one in the chest. Nothing like an abject lesson. Spent 10 minutes going over what occurred and what his idiot father did wrong.
And that is exactly what I want to avoid.
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