DON'T buy a Track Saw? Build this instead!

today we're asking the question if this project sitting right in front of me can either negate or severely diminish the need for a track saw in a wood shop I think the answer is yes I first saw this on Jay bates's Channel and I knew as soon as I saw them I was gonna have to build my own version and add a new feature to it and that's what we're doing today so what these are are an in-feed system for Sheet Goods on a table saw so this gives me a lot more control over large material or sheet Goods which we're going to be cutting a lot we recently got rid of our big 5x10 professional CNC machine because that was a production machine and since we're not doing production anymore there was really no need for it look at all this room for activities so we've downsized so we've got a 1finity now this platform is a 48 inch by 32 inch cut capacity platform which means we're going to be breaking down a lot of sheet Goods to fit on this machine this is really up to our game when it comes to handling large form material on the table saw but I want to take this one step further and add some new functionality to it that's going to make it so much easier for just about everybody to use so we're going to do in today's video I'm going to show you how I build them show you the new feature and then we'll demo it for you at the end of this video the material we're using for today's project is a plywood now the black stuff you see is just an ABS material that's laminated to the plywood for the legs and braces I'm going to use some leftover Baltic Birch it's not a full three-quarter which is what I kind of designed this for it's a 19 mil but we're going to make it work in this situation I have all the parts ripped down to their width and pretty close to their final legs not quite but because there's so many duplicate Parts I'm going to go ahead and put them together so when I cut them and drill all the holes I'm doing it all at one time that just minimizes the amount of effort or work that I have to do now to do that I'm using a pretty common trick where I putting painters tape down adding a little bit of CA glue to the tape and then a little activator on the opposite side and sandwiching the parts together it only takes a second and it cuts the amount of work I have to do in half this is one of the reasons I really like doing duplicate Parts it's just easier all right five more to go [Music] that only took like six and a half seconds totally worth the effort pulling from the square end I'm going to go ahead and Mark layout on all my pieces so I'm going to do this all in one function put it back on my project cart and then I'll go do all the cutting that way I'm not back and forth little things like that can really save a lot of time when you're in the shop so for any of you that are interested in building this for your own shop I have a detailed set of plans that I'll link down in the description box below also some of the items that we're using to build it and build it with will be linked down there as well layout on this is really pretty straightforward and you could obviously try to figure out how to build one on your own so no hard feelings if you just go out and build one but if you do want a detailed set of plans that kind of gets rid of some of the hassles of building it like I said links in the description box below let me finish up this layout so we can build it and have all the funds [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] we've got most of our Milling done now with the exception of a couple of things these little pieces are going to be leg stretchers and we don't know the angle yet so we haven't cut those and then the legs themselves because they're going to be splayed out need a little bit of an angle on the bottom so I'm going to cut that after I pull these apart and once they're pulled apart I'm going to do a little bit of round over work I'm not going to put much of a round over on them just a little bit to knock that sharp edge off in case I bump into it [Music] [Applause] all right now we've got everything done it's time to start assembling these I'm going to start with the top and then the top what I'm calling the top brace this goes along the top and it's what we attach our legs to so I want to make sure this is centered in here because I'm going to have legs on either side of it so I just got a little trim gauge here to set it up and I've set it up so it's the same on both sides because I'm screwing it from the top into this I need this to be held in place while I do that so I've got a little bit of thin CA here in a little syringe we got off Amazon these are great little syringes to have around the shop instead of trying to place this in place on top of CA glue I'm just going to squirt a little bit of thin CA right along the edge here I'm going to give that a second to soak into the material and then I'm going to squirt it with the activator here and that'll lock it in position here in just a few seconds and if you get some bubbling up no big deal just scrape it off real quick then I can come down to the other side do the same things and that's going to lock my part where I want it then I can flip it over and I'm going to pre-drill all the screw positions on this Perfect all right so we've got our brace on our top next thing we need to do is add the legs now when we're adding the legs we want to make sure that that curved part is facing down because these are going to hinge up like that and we want this flat part here to stop so that actually stops the hinging action and puts our legs in the position we want them in this bottom plater the leg plate is attached to the bottom of the legs and I've pre-drilled some holes and just ran in some screws to hold it in position now you see these two positions right here those are for adjustable feet but before you put the adjustable feet in we need to tap them out this is a tap and I'm going to use that in this case the other way you can do it is with a bolt so this is just a 3 8 bolt which is the right size that we need for this and I've cut the head off I can put that in my drill and just force that in and that'll cut our threads for us I'm going to install my adjustable feet before I put this on the legs because we're already here and I don't want to have to do it again later when I drill these holes on the and the sides of the legs I drilled them straight through so these are at a 90 and now it's at a bit of an angle to the leg so a little trick for installing these start by pulling it to one side and getting lined up with the hole I want it to come through the leg and through the brace and then I'm going to push it back there's going to you're going to feel a little bit of pressure on there and then I'm going to clamp the legs together and that's going to kind of bring them together give them a little bit of a bow shape and then I can finish putting my bolt through if you're still finding it doesn't want to come through very easily rather than pounding it through take a driver and drive it through and then you can let the pressure off the clamp now you want to Snug this down fairly good and if you want to use washers here you can it's not super necessary because you're not going to be constantly hinging these all day long so by doing it this way it creates a little bit of friction so the hinging action is kind of nice and tight and it's not floppy and trust me the older you get the more concerned you get about floppy all right I mentioned earlier why we didn't cut the leg stretcher and this is why because when we compress those we really don't know what that measurement is going to be so now I'm just going to go ahead and put the leg stretcher in place [Music] I cut it I just barely took the line and I'm going to set it in and I'm going to push up a little bit and that's going to squeeze together and kind of hold that stretcher in place so in this case I don't have to do the ca trick then I want to make sure I pre-drill my holes and put screws in all four positions foreign that's going to offer that leg some stability so this Center position or this hole I have right here is for a bumper now I'm going to have a lift arm or lift mechanism that's going to be tilting down and when it drops after the plywood loads it's going to hit this pretty hard so I just want a little bit of protection it's not one of those things that's 100 necessary but the other thing it does is when this is folded out it makes sure that that lift arm is a little bit of an angle so when I lean my plywood in it's there's no really no chance what's falling over on me next on this build we're going to install the lift arm I need to attach a little hook to the bottom that's going to catch our plywood I'll go ahead and put those together off camera and then we're going to hinge this whole arm to the system so it can move back and forth as we're loading plywood I'm going to take the lift arm butt it up to the top here and turn it upside down and stand the leg to its upright position and that's going to help me position my hinge the hinge is going to go right here I'm going to install it on the legs first and then to the lift arm so I'm just going to give myself a little pencil line so I know where the base of that hinge is I want to make sure that my hole positions that I'm pre-tapping for the screws are right in the center of those hinge holes so I'm using a self-centering hinge bit there's a drill bit in there it centers it right in the hole and then when I push down it gets the hole right in the center that keeps everything nice and lined up so we're nearly done now we need to make a way to mount it to the table saw bar so every table saw is going to be slightly different from Brand to brand and in this case I'm going to have to raise this up a little bit for it to be flush with the top also on some table sides you have a much bigger Gap here between the bar and the front of the table saw and in this one I can actually use a three-quarter inch piece of plywood and then fasten it to this and that would be a great stop but on a lot of table saws it's very narrow I mean as narrow as a quarter inch in those situations it wouldn't work I'm going to make one of these to put on my systems just because I like the look it's a little bit cleaner and I have a good place to solid mount five screws also on different table sides the height from the top of the bar to the top of the table saw is going to be different on the Harvey Grizzly and saw stop it's usually anywhere between three quarter inch and an inch and an eighth on the Laguna size it's only about 5 8 of an inch if you want to do this on a Laguna side you'd have to take some material out of there to make it come down to flush with the top of the saw this little bracket's about five inches long and it's super easy to make this is aluminum which is a softer material so you can cut it on the chop saw you can also drill it with regular woodworking tools and put tapered holes in with regular woodworking tools as well now once that's done we're going to put a little bit of non-slip rubber on the face of it that goes on the fence side or the bar side and once we put a clamp on here that's going to help give it a little bit extra grab I've got my holes drilled my cork rubber on and I've got a little double-sided speed tape on here to position it I'm going to go ahead and put it down on the bar and hold it tight with one finger and then I'm going to bring that top piece up tight up against the front of the table saw and get that centered out and just push down and that double sided tape will hold in position now I can flip it over pre-drill and put my screws in next I want to get a position to install my clamp I'm going to go ahead and butt that up against the fence and then I'm just going to take my pencil and Mark a little line at the front so I can take it back over to the workbench and install it [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign although it takes a couple seconds to set these up it's a lot less time consuming than pulling out foam or saw horses throwing that on there getting the track saw lining the cuts up so in my opinion this severely diminishes the need for a track saw in a woodworking shop this is just easier by every measure to me this makes more sense than setting up with the track saw I don't want anybody to think I'm picking on track saws there's really a lot of good uses for them but as far as breaking down material or ripping panels down for builds this just makes a whole lot more sense to me and then adding that loading mechanism that just makes it super easy to get that full sheet of heavy material up into position and then be able to maneuver it and move it around as needed while it's up in that position just made a whole lot of sense to me I can't thank Jay enough for sharing this on his YouTube channel that's really what it's all about here on YouTube is sharing our experience and our knowledge and trying to develop cool things and build cool things I think adding the loading mechanism to this just made it super easy to get that material up being able to maneuver it was one of those things that just made it even better and obviously you can adjust them as needed I can get in between them so I just there's nothing not to like about these again thank you very much for watching if you would like to get a set of plans to build some of these for yourself I'll put a link down in the description box one thing I would mention is that the plans are designed for a table saw with a height of between 33 and 34 and a half if yours is a little higher or a little shorter than that so make sure you check your table saw height before you start building them and add or subtract length to the legs as needed if you need me I will be in my shop playing with my new table saw infeeds you guys have a good one and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: izzy swan

Views: 563,370

Keywords: How to, diy, tablesaw, table saw, tools, projects, woodworking, shop projects, jigs, band saw, Izzy swan, Track Saw, Tablesaw Jigs, Infeed, how to, woodworking projects

Id: SlZsKqE0s9k

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023