I Should Have Bought A Saw Stop!!

i'm recording this on an iphone so uh may not be you know great but someday i'll figure out how to deal with the video equipment um i'm doing this review because i'm faced with the same thing every other woodworker is faced with you know i've been work woodworking for 20 years and i do cabinets fine furniture previously i had a delta unison that was from the early 90s it had the bees motor fence system it was the full table and the saw served me wonderful when i bought the saw i think it paid around fourteen hundred dollars for it brand new off the showroom floor uh it was a great white edition that came out i mean delta had a plaque i've got somewhere in my shop that they even engraved your name on the saw unfortunately when i moved i had a two-car garage i moved and i thought it was going to be great because i was moving from a two-car garage shop to a 42 by 42 building so i bought all this equipment i sold a lot of my older equipment first bought some newer equipment and i chose to go with grizzly now my choice was do i buy jet delta powermatic all the name brands and especially sawstop one of my main considerations was sawstop and that was because i had had an accident with i didn't lose any digits or anything like other people that i've seen uh that's number one the consideration you you should you should consider it uh i had a sheet of plywood get caught in a table saw when my granddaughter walked in the shop one day took my eyes off of it for a second to make sure she wasn't going to get in the path of where i was cutting to picked it up i used to choose enough i had a snuff can in my front left pocket picked me up off the floor shot me across to the back wall and uh when i got my wits and crawled around for a while and my wife heard the noise she came out to the shop she was worried i'm crawling around on the floor trying to gather myself together when i got up making sure i got all my digits and trying to figure out what happened and when i looked at my pants all i saw was brown and i didn't know what it was it was the snuff can the snuff can in my pocket went from the normal thickness to about the thickness of a quarter that's how hard that piece of wood come and hit me in a thigh and i was black and blue in the crotch and the thigh and i've been afraid of it ever since now do i still work on the saw yes do i still do everything i used to do yes i don't take my eyes off the wood but safety is always in the back of my mind which it should be with everybody so getting back to the main subject when i had to make the decision sawstop was just a little more money than i wanted to spend because i could get this saw that shaper the planer which those things i didn't have a big planer i had a delta benchtop planer at the time because that's what i worked with for years and it worked for me but i wanted to upgrade when i moved to a bigger building so i've done a review on the planer uh you know it's it's working out okay so far uh the shape where i'm going to do a review on that there's some an issue with that that i'm not very happy with but what i will say up front is grizzly who i bought this equipment from has excellent customer service i cannot complain about their service what i can complain about is the quality control and the quality of the parts i'm used to good things and i've sacrificed good things to save money so i'm trying to keep you from doing that if i had to do it all over again and i may still i don't know i would have bought a saw stop mainly because i'll take you through this saw and you'll you'll know by the end of this video what i'm talking about so number one we'll start off okay the saw uh had a a shorter fence on it when i purchased it it had uh i think it was like a 40 inch fence but it would only cut 29 and a half inches and i made that mistake when i ordered it instead of getting the full extension i opted for the shorter one so i bit the bullet bought the rail extension kit after about three and a half months of receiving rail kits that were damaged from grizzly i finally got to put one set together that stayed straight and didn't have any dents or shipping damage or whatever you want to call it quality control issues whatever you want to call it so i put that on the the outfeed table or not the outfeed table side table is junk grizzlies out out feed and extension tables are just plain junk you know they're wafer thin material on the top so i manufactured this one myself laminated it put it on and it's sort of a replica of what my unison used to have on it okay so that's issue number one issue number two defense okay the fence is a replica of everybody else's fence be smart sawstop whatever does it glide nice and easy ah fairly easy not as easy as my biesmar did but it's not too bad you know it leaves marks if you notice it leaves marks on the rails from where it slides back and forth because the the resin pieces that are under here that it slides on aren't as heavy they're softer material so it's going to wear faster i can see that already that's an issue now the sides okay these are not the originals these are the originals was the phenolic resin that they had on it which is junk it's so soft it was never straight from the factory another quality control issue i'm sure so i got fed up with that i've shimmed them i tried adjusting them so what i did is used them as a pattern took some corian that i had left over from a countertop and i patterned it and i made both sides of the fence now i have straight sides so i i eliminated that issue all right now we're going to go on to another issue the other issue is is that the magnifier which there is no magnifier it's just a piece of plexiglass in here my other saw's had a magnifier on it and this saw i'm going to take the 34 like i would if i was ripping something and i'm going to lock it in okay i locked the fence in now you'll notice if i don't even have to move the camera very much you can see what i'm talking about this thing will shift an eighth of an inch based on if you breathe or not so what do you do you're fine-tuning all the time you're sitting there messing around with a measuring tape trying to get everything exact and it's just not i mean my my unison i or and i'm assuming saw stops the same way you could dial this into 30 34 inches and with the magnifier it it makes it easy to get right on that mark and not have to second guess or re-measure or you know spend a lot of time wasting time okay that said from the factory the blade was square to the table uh within a 2000 so i can't complain about that uh the fence is adjustable it's adjusted within 2 000 that's great okay this is another problem i have this blade guard right here who in their right mind which i didn't know when i bought it would ever want to change a blade guard i mean a blade guard a blade insert and remove this hex head screw so every time i'll walk you through it every time you want to change to a different blade or a dado insert or whatever you're gonna do zero clearance it doesn't matter what it is you got to take your provided allen wrench set that came with the saw i'm doing this one-handed because i'm on an iphone because i haven't figured out how to run my video camera yet and you put it in here and you have to unscrew this which i've dropped it in the saw before if you're changing you set it off to the side you got to take the screw out which isn't very easy to get out as you can see sit it off to the side that's the screw take your insert out swap your insert okay and then you've got to put your your other insert in let's just you know imagine we're switching an insert you put your insert in you put your screw back in and then you got to re-tighten it so who the heck wants to do that i mean i never had to do that before i know sawstop has a nice little lever down here you pick up on the lever you pop it up and it locks out you pull it out you put your other one in and you lock it down and you're good to go it's just crazy things the other thing is i had a heck of a time getting this thing to uh be flat and parallel with the with the the saw i mean it's it's a nightmare i have other inserts from my old saw still left over they're so much easier all right so we're going to put this back together try quickly so that i can move on here not waste your time too much all right so now you got that done all right that's in next is the blade guard okay this has a riving knife that comes with it it's got the quick feature which i'll do for you here whoops sorry about my fingers okay the ease of knobs that's another thing the ease of knobs uh the knobs are nice the locking device is nice but when you try to raise the saw up and down it tends to stick and it's been cleaned and lubed it's not as smooth as my other one it's a little hinky but uh it'll work you know i mean you can you can get by with it okay they do have the quick you pull this out like this and you put your robbing knife in which i'm going to do one-handed if i can do it let's see okay pull this out push it down in lock it in pull up okay it's in so that's a nice feature i like it it's my old saw didn't because it was older did not have the riving knife like that so uh it's it's a quick release great i'm sure um the other manufacturers off of that now uh we'll take it out bear with me sorry okay i've gotten it out now what i'm gonna show you up close is if you can see these nicks that are in the back of the table that's from their blade guard now their blade guard i'll show you is junk i mean i don't even use it um it's been a a headache from day one so if it's it looks so dusty because it sits under there and it shouldn't be it should be a piece of equipment that you use that has any kickback pawls on it that when you need to use it you can use it and it's to serve you and and be a safety item now i'm reducing the amount of safety that i have on this saw because of the fact that i have to take this off in order to even use the saw and i'll show you why first off when you put this down in the saw okay i've got it in went in nice and smooth now i have to lock and play with it to get it to lock in still isn't even really locked in i think it just did okay it just locked in sorry it just locked in now if you notice the annual kickback pawls on here are junk they're cheap and they sit on the table they don't sit back here where you can get away with this they sit on the table so now every time you raise and lower the blade this blade guard if i lower this saw blade with the blade guard on these dig into the table until the point that it binds this up and it will not go down and i didn't figure that out until after i marred up the table so i called grizzly and grizzly's solution was well you know they've got these little connectors here you're supposed to take and put these up like this when you don't need them i never had to do that before never you know so it's just more time more time consuming and this little sliding feature if you notice it's not even parallel to this slot i mean it rides crooked you can you can bend it you can pull on it you can do whatever you want with it it doesn't matter it changes all the time it's it's it's just plain junk so moving on now the other thing is is on the table i'm going to take this back out so that it's not in the way to show you other things here okay all right the other thing is is that this extension wing right here if you look is not even with this you know i mean i can it's just fit and finish you know you can i can catch my nail on there and it's not much you know it might be a sixteenth of an inch but if you go back to the back the back you know is is on the rail and it's you know sits fairly close to this i'm not going to say this i had a hard time lining this up um you can't get it perfect uh it's it's just doesn't work it's almost like they got it's uneven or bowed just a bit and you're forcing things that don't need to be forced this one came out a little bit better uh if you look at the the this side here i it's not even it's negligible so i'm not even going to say anything about that one but this one's definitely different than this one and then you know it's beveled all across the front the other thing you'll notice is big scratches in the table that's because the metal that's used here i don't think it's i i could be wrong like i'm not an expert on this so um it's not as polished and refined as the sawstop or my unisaw was you know the new ones i'm not sure if they're all making them like this now or not but this metal is really soft if you if i drag this i shouldn't do it but if i drag this and go like this it's going to leave a scratch i mean i don't know if you can see that or not i just did that and it leaves a scratch so you know i keep it polished i i take care of my equipment all right let's move on i got the mobile base the mobile base is nice it works um you know the the it is what it is all right so let's go underneath here's another pet peeve another one is if you go underneath the saw where your back connection is one is it's it's on the side it's underneath your your side table so you have to crawl under the saw to open it okay well that's not too much of a problem now we're going to open it it's got a nice knob to open it it looks great until you open it and you realize what the heck it's like the dust collection is about three inches from the bottom of the table saw higher so what you get is this wall of sawdust that builds up in here because this is is down below here if i pull this out you'll see that as i'm digging here there's a there's a ledge here it doesn't come down to here and feed into your where your dust collection would be it's literally got you know an inch and a half or two inch lip here it's probably about more like an inch and a half in here so the sawdust backs up to here then you got another three inches or whatever before it ever can get to the back so the whole thing fills up with sawdust because nothing's going to flow down to that because it's got a hill to climb it's got to build up to this level up here before the dust even can get extracted out you know all that dust has to fill up to where the bottom of this hole is up to here that means your cabinet's all is literally a third full of sawdust all the time and it can only suck from here up that's why when i open this you'll see that it's got that valley in it where it's been sucking right there but it can't pull anything else down my other saws it used to be on a slope and the slope led to the vac chute and the back chute was able to pull it right up here's another brain fart okay on on this this is your motor cover now there's a couple things with this one is is that the design it's a square design anybody in their right mind would know that if this doesn't have some type of a curve to it inside let's say a plate even a plate that would been installed i could see having the square and adding a little bit of a around radius to the inside with a plate in here but they didn't what they did was they left it square so that it sits there and fills up full of sawdust now this should have been curved so that it can get down into the saw to the to the bed i mean you can see how much sawdust is in here and get to the back okay now i got to put the table down well maybe i don't but i will you see that nut that's right up here oh yeah that's your adjusting nut for your belt tension now how the heck do you get to that i've adjusted the belts on here tensioned them and what i found is see how it sticks i have to sit here and get it once you bump it it'll get moving once and once it's moving it's okay but all right this is all the way down now the other nut is back here but this this is in the way of getting to here so you can't get a socket on this you have to get an open-end wrench or a box then wrench on this end this end you would love to get a socket on here it would make it so easy except your electrical connection on your motor is right in front of that there's no i can't even get my finger between here so what ends up happening is you gotta unplug the saw take this cover off there's three screws holding this in you gotta detach this whole box from here and then move this out of the way so that you can get to the nut because there's not enough room to get any leverage in here to get this nut loose and if you do you might be able to if you had uh if you're using an open end wrench but everybody knows an open-end wrench is going to stretch on this bolt whenever you put any pressure on it to try to tighten it down so it's just a nightmare you know it took me like an hour and a half just to go through that to adjust the belt tension you know up here for the three belts now i know they've discontinued this model but i would say most of their models are probably going to be similar to this um but that's why i labeled the video i should have bought a saw stop uh just fit and finish all these little quirks all the time that i have tied up into this um and every time i come out here to work to to do what i enjoy doing i spend time having to deal with these issues and it's really getting on my nerves um defense the issue with the fence you know it makes it makes work out of something that's supposed to be pleasure and just the safety aspect of the whole thing now that i sit here i should have opted to buy the sauce up stop saw and what i've gone for the five horse or the three horse no it all goes back to the point of if you can afford to spend the money buy the five horsepower saw get all the bells and whistles i would have gotten the extension tape i mean the sliding table full rail system i would have maxed this thing out the overhead vacuum arm uh i would have went for those things now back when i was saving money to get that and that i would sacrifice those for a saw stops assault [Music] and then i would use that saw and save up the money to buy other equipment later down the road that's just my thoughts on it you know i hope i can save you guys some time and effort and money uh plus the fact that you know as you get older i'm getting older now um i the safety issue comes into mind so you know it's i hope i'm helping you if you have any other questions about this saw or anything else in the video just you know send me a post and her comment and i'll get back to you if you want to know anything any specifics about it you know i'll be happy to help you um i'm going to do some other projects and some tool reviews after this uh to basically get the shop organized i got to get it cleaned up you know i've got a lot of a lot of good equipment and i'll be doing some reviews on that [Music] but if it were me and i had to make the decision over like i said i would have went saw stop you know everybody else is going to tell you oh well you know you can go with somebody else like jet or you can go with powermatic i mean powermatic's a good name um jet i've had good luck with my jet equipment and uh but i i still i still go back to the i believe wholeheartedly that saw stop has that market beat i think fit fit and finish and quality of materials i think i would go with them and that's just my honest opinion after owning all this and after going through the transition um would i have gotten one if i still had my unison probably not because i had no issues with it other than i would have liked a sliding table um but you know that that's water under the bridge so hope i help you save some money and uh if you go out and you buy a saw stop let me know how you like it and you know i'll post some more videos in the future for tools i do i'm gonna i have a lot of tool reviews to do so give me time and i'll get to it take care god bless and uh i hope you have a great new year bye

Channel: Tupelo Woodcarver

Views: 53,247

Rating: 4.3002753 out of 5

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Id: rv6cZJ4s7xg

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020