At long last, this beast is done.  Well, as done as it’s going to be for now.  There’s a few modifications I’ll eventually make to it – I’d like to button up the dust collection a little tighter and install a splitter or riving knife and get some kind of kickback preventer thing attached but for right now it works and it works great.

Yeah, that’s the legendary Incra LS32-TS high precision fence attached to it.  Yes, I’m well aware that’s like putting a BMW steering wheel in a Plymouth Duster.  I can explain.  You see, my old table saw, also a Craftsman, came with this crappy, wobbly, tilted table saw fence.  Craftsman makes great tools, but their table saw fences are awful.  The thing never got the same distance twice.  It was never parallel to the blade.  It was not at a 90 degree angle to the table top.  It was a piece of crap and I hated it and lived with it for years.  With its help, I made dozens of lopsided pieces.  Every cabinet, every fireplace surround, every desk and table has at least ten flaws thanks to that effing thing.  I told myself this time I was going to treat myself to a nice fence, and my dart landed on that one.

I haven’t used the LS32-TS enough to write an informed opinion on it, but I am very pleased with it, even though I think they over-engineered the thing quite a bit.  And it is very difficult to calibrate.  Nonetheless, I look forward to many years of swearing at it enjoying its use.

And here’s a pic of the Incra miter gauge I had from my last table saw.  It sat disused in a corner until the thing rusted out on me, and I had to sand it down and paint it and restore it to usefulness once again.  That took me about two days but it’s better than spending the cash for a new one.  When you live on an island, you really go to great lengths to not waste anything.

You can laugh at my dust collection system all you want, but that 5 gallon bucket will catch a lot of sawdust that would normally just collect inside the thing.  I’ve tried putting a hose and a vacuum on my saw before but it was about as effective as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.  The bucket is tightly sealed (by means of four bent nails; really high tech stuff!) to a cut piece of 1/4″ laminate on the bottom so there’s no gaps for the dust to get through.  The inside of the saw housing is sealed with enough duck tape to make Red Green proud.  Sawdust can still come out the back end and until I make a housing for it that will continue to happen.  But that bucket catches a surprising amount of debris, and it’s a handy container too.

Yeah, here in this pic you can see the bucket and maybe even some duck tape if you look closely enough.  I had a lot of fun painting and restoring the parts.  Even if the final product looks like a frankenstein saw (yes, it does, I won’t be offended if you say it) it was cool making everything fresh and new.

I put Kreg dual locking casters on the bottom so it can roll around.  Attached directly to the stand, the weight of this beast bent the metal legs (yes, I was very sad and frustrated when I saw it) and made it a little crooked, so I put a sheet of plywood down on the base and damn is that thing sturdy now.  Doesn’t budge at all when I lock all four casters and make cuts.  That thing rolls so smoothly that I just push it around the shop and ride on top of it shouting “Whee!” the whole way.

In the end, this was not unlike restoring an old car.  In fact, my knuckles are about as badly beat up from this project as they ever were from a ’72 beetle.  But unlike an old car, it’s not for show.  This workhorse is going to make a lot of sawdust over the next few years.  I have cabinets to make, and tables, and shelves, and wardrobes, and boxes and drawers and doors and even tools.  It’s been over a year since I’ve had access to a table saw in my wood shop, and I am anxious to crank out some projects.

So I was visiting with father in law the other weekend and I mentioned that I was looking for a table saw.  He said, and I quote, “well, your prayers have been answered.”  If by prayers he meant nightmares then I think he was spot on.

He was willing to part with his old table saw, a Craftsman model, probably from the Reagan administration.  It had been around the block more than a few times, ridden hard, hung up wet, and thrown from the back of a moving vehicle at a busy intersection (true story).  But like all things craftsman, it is a workhorse.

I was torn.  I really wanted to save up for a nice cabinet saw with tolerances that have a lot of zeroes in them.  But of course, they have price tags that also have a few zeroes, so after much deliberation I figured I’d do my best to restore this Craftsman and see what I could do with it.

This thing was a mess and it needed help.  It was rusted, dented, gouged and beat up.  I started making a list of the parts it would need, then crossing off the things they no longer sold.  This started to turn into something like restoring an antique.  It’s the kind of thing I better enjoy doing, because it’s a lot more cost effective to just go and buy a new one.  Still, like many things, they don’t make them like they used to.  When I started taking this thing apart (and believe me, I dismantled it down to the last rusted lock washer), I saw that the parts were a little more solid than what you find in many new saws.  They cut corners these days.  The metal is a little thinner, the bolts are a little softer.

First thing I did was give it all a fresh coat of paint.  Several coats, in fact, of rust resistant enamel.  It came with what looked like after-market wheels on the base that I wasn’t sure would make it to the final build but I painted them just in case.  Father in law had mentioned those wheels were kind of crappy anyway.  I even sanded, cleaned and hand painted the bolts that came with it.  Why would anyone waste time on such a ridiculous endeavor when you can buy perfectly good bolts at the hardware store for 10 cents each?  Well, these were pretty good bolts, all made out of hardened steel that you don’t always find at the hardware store.  And more importantly, they were the right size.  So it took two hours of my life to clean them and paint them, but the saw will fit together correctly.

Now the base and frame were a little dented but nothing a sledgehammer couldn’t smooth out.  The table top, though, was in really bad shape.  Rusted, dented, gouged, pitted – it looked like it had been dragged behind a car for a few miles and left for dead behind a liquor store.  I started in with the 80 grit sandpaper and quickly realized that sanding it smooth was going to take forever.  And you don’t want to sand to much because you don’t want to destroy the flatness of it.  At least not too much.  At the end of the day, I burned through about 40 discs of sandpaper just to get the rust spots off.

At last, after sanding it so much I blew a fuse, I deemed the surface to be adequate and ready for service.  Some of those deeper gouges I’ll never get out but at least wood will glide smoothly over it now.

It’s far from done.  I got the stand assembled and the top generally put together (I just got the bolts hand tight as I’ll want to calibrate it when I get a new saw blade) just so it’s not in two dozen pieces strewn about the shop.  Got enough going on in that shop to have to contend with that.

It still needs so many things.  I’d like some extension wings to make the surface a little bigger but so far I can’t find the right size.  Not even on the internet.  I think this thing is so old they stopped making parts for it.  I may have to make my own.  It needs a riving knife, a good fence, one of those fancy zero-clearance things for the blade, some kind of dust collection set up, and the motor needs a little electrical help (just gotta replace the melted power cable, nothing major).  But it’s almost there.  Just a few more hundred dollar bills and it’ll be a good little saw for the shop.