My son gave me a call the other day and told me he picked up an old Craftsman 8" Cabinet Saw. "Huh!" says I - "never heard of such a thing".
Well, the other night I had a chance to stop by his house and take a look. He'd completely disassembled it, cleaned everything all up, painted the cabinet, fence and miter, graphited all of the drives, and cleaned up the top to a very respectable shine. He didn't have the top bolted back on yet so we spent a bit of time admiring the simple but fairly heavy duty construction of the saw. Really a nice little saw. No measurable runout, good tight bearings and a set of holes to mount a riving knife. We'll have to fab a knife for it since it's missing but that's a pretty trivial undertaking for us. The base looks like the base of a table saw at first - until you realize that it's cast iron. But - it's not a floor standing unit. It has two access panels on the sides that make it easy to get in and clean gunk out of the drives or to just put your fingers in to test the rotational speed of the blade without getting your tabletop all bloody. It has a calibrated blade height indicator as well. All in all sort of a neat little saw. It will be interesting to see this thing cut wood after he gets the motor mounted and the top trued up.