Ron, check the belt tension, put a rip blade in your saw. If the belt is loose you won't get full power to the saw. You still should be able to rip 3/4" poplar with a sharp combination blade. Use a rip blade if you have more than a couple of rips. mike
I have noticed a lot of great replies and only have one thing to add. Are you using a long/cheap extension cord? The wrong cord can cause a lot of power drop.
I have the leg kit too. Aluminum top, undersized miter slots, universal motor with direct shaft drive? No blade tilt wheel?
Crappy saw, but not useless. Think hard about building a crosscut sled. I built one with a miter attachment and a finger jointing attachment, and it made a tremendous difference in how much use I can get out of the saw. The miter gauge on this thing was useless, even with an extended fence.
Toldja... :) It took me a *lot* of futzing to get the blade straight with the fence, and at 90 degrees to the table. I vowed to never, ever tilt the blade again.
Fix it. You can probably bend it enough to get it in line. I run without the guard, but I use the splitter whenever possible, which is most of the time. When you cut a piece of case-hardened walnut that starts curling toward the blade on the far side of the cut, you'll see why. ka-POW! Glad I wasn't standing in front of that. (Kickback.) That was the day I decided to futz with my splitter!
Took me a long time to try anything adventuresome myself. I don't have a planer or jointer either, so until I got some hand planes and learned how to use them well enough to do a passable job of getting the wood into shape, I couldn't use S2S hardwood lumber anyway.
I still have a long way to go, but I'm getting excited about how far I've raised the bar now. I did a chess board out of walnut and maple with this saw. Thought it was a ruin, but after I planed it (and planed it, and planed it) it came out a true thing of beauty. Some alignment problems I'll have to address next time I do a glue-up, but they're not *too* far off, and with eyes closed, I can only tell by the changing grain where one square stops and the other begins. It came out *smooth*.
Another thing... Poplar is soft, but pine is a lot softer. No matter what, you *will* have to take that into account when you cut. The tougher the wood, the slower the feed rate needs to be. I can plow through 3/4" pine on this thing, but I have to take my time with anything else. Oak is about the worst I've encountered so far.
Good luck!
You owe me a monitor!
I have one of those 6.5HP 120v Shop Vacs!
In today's world of marketing, the credo seems to be "Just say it!", regardless of the facts.
Barry
In't that False advertising?
They have a way of hooking meter to it that says it is 6+ hp at full stop. While not an accepted method by engineers, it get around the advertising aspects.
I do recall some years back (maybe in the late 70's?) the auto industry adopted new standards for rating engines. At least if they all do it the same way, you have a little basis for comparison. Ed
In hp, they are probably figuring based on output right before your circut trips in a completely open situation. An expalme being that the blade being bogged down and stops moving and there is that instant before the breaker goes and the motor is peaked.
Don
wrote
You'd think so, but let's do the math.
6.5 HP is impossible to get from a 120v 15 or 20 amp circuit.768w = 1 HP
My 6.5 HP vac says 11 amps. 120 x 11 = 1320 watts
1320 / 2 (rounded) = 1.72 HP (under 100% efficiency! )Barry
In the vac's case, this is still not possible with a 20 amp, 120 volt circuit.
Barry
One would wish.
However, the claim is "Peak" HP.
And the mfr can, undoubtedly, demonstrate "instanteous" levels just before stall/failure, that substantiate the claim.
Unclear if this state is reached before a typical residential circuit breaker blows, or not.
It's "staying within the _letter_ of the law, while totally ignoring the
*spirit* of the law."
they're not talking about YOUR shop's circuitry- in the test lab they use much bigger circuits....
That's true in the legal system too.
It's easy to get bogus horsepower ratings. You don't have to lie. Run the tool off a circuit that delevers the rated voltage that can deliver far more amperage than the common circuit. Stall the motor under power and measure the amp draw. Multiply that by the voltage, devide by 746 and you have your BS horsepower rating. By this rating method, I have some 15000 horsepower wire in my garage.
Close. They use a 60 amp cicuit. This is what they get just before the smoke excapes.
No extension cord was used. However, it is sharing the circuit with an old fridge.
That can add to the problem. Depending on the age of the fridge, it can be sucking more juice than the saw. FWIW, I had an extra old Fridge, about 10 cu ft. Replaced it with a new 18 cu ft frost free and my electric bill dropped $10 a month.
Point of this: Buy your wife a new fridge and put the electric savings towards a new saw. Win - Win ! Ed
How far is the plug from the load center and what's it's rating?
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