Is this the World's Best Table Saw? (+Tips & Tricks)

welcome to my workshop thanks for joining me so in basically every video that i uploaded recently where i've done any sort of woodworking i've used this table saw to break down my sheets of wood and in every one of those videos a bunch of you guys asked me about this table saw so in today's video we're talking about this tablesaw and why i think this is the world's best table saw thanks for joining me let's get started [Music] alright so just to clarify a little bit i'm not saying that this particular saw is the world's best table saw just that in my opinion this style of table saw is the best one and what i mean by this style is a table saw with a sliding table now these things are fairly popular here in europe where i'm from most of them are made in either austria or germany and i've actually also seen a couple of canadian and australian youtubers that have this saw but in the us where i know a lot of you guys are from this is not a common style of table saw so in this video i'm going to show you guys why i really like this style of table saw we'll have a look at the differences between this style and a more traditional fixed base table saw the pros and cons a couple of things that this table saw is really good at a couple of things that it isn't that good at and i'll show you a couple of cool tricks that apply regardless of what style table saw you have or even if you don't have a table saw so this week's video is going to be a little bit different i'm not going to build anything that is because i'm working on a much bigger project that will hopefully be ready next week it's a really cool project that i'm super excited to show you guys it involves literally hundreds of hours of 3d printing a bunch of movable parts and a whole bunch of different materials so to make sure that you don't miss my future videos make sure you subscribe and ring that bell to get notified when i upload something new all right back to my thought now this particular one is a felder saw which is a austrian brand this machine is about 20 years old and i bought it used from my old school where i used to study and work it has seen about 18 years of using abuse from architecture and design students which is definitely evident by all the small bowel scars that it has all over the place but it still works really really great and we're super happy with it alright so let's start with where the two different styles the table saws are very similar that being the right side of the table saw so on this side you have a sliding fence that you can set to whatever dimension you want on this saw i have a scale in the back here that i can use to set the width of the wood that i want to cut and you can use this to cut strips of wood it's super repeatable and it works really great as a matter of fact i can actually lock the table on this thing and then remove this bit and for all intents and purposes this is now the equivalent of having a fixed base table saw on this saw you can also move the fence back and forth we'll get into why that is useful in just a second by cutting strips of wood or cutting pieces of wood that fit within the width of however wide your table saw is and cutting pieces that aren't too narrow relative to how wide they are is basically all you can do in a setup like this now let's say you want to cut your strips of wood into specific lengths that's where you would normally have to build a sled on your table saw or use that super short janky thing that comes with them that rides inside this slot which should be fair if you build a sled for your table saw that works really well but on this one that feature is already built in i could just put this piece back on like this and i'm all set up to cut my strips of wood all right so now this is where the sliding table is super useful on this side i've got a sliding stop block here with a scale that i can lock in place which makes this entire thing super repeatable what i often do to get clean pieces with two nice ends is that i will set my final dimension on here then i will lift up this and slide my piece slightly past it do the cut flip the piece around butt it up against my guide and then do the second cut that way i know the dimension is accurate and that both short sides are really nice and clean now there is a downside to having a sliding table like this which is that it's kind of hard to cut really small pieces because there isn't a whole lot of support all the way out here the scale inside also doesn't go past 18 centimeters whereas if you build your own sled that goes on top of the table saw that usually has a fence going all the way across which does a much better job at supporting small pieces of wood and also there's really nothing keeping you from building a sled for this table saw either since it has the tracks on the side here that the other style table saws have as well now to the main reason why i think sliding table saws are so useful and that is their ability to support the wood really securely really far away from the blade now this is probably one of the smaller table saws i can buy and this particular one has about 120 centimeters from the back fence to the start of the blade which is just about the same dimension as the short end of a full sheet of plywood so i can basically support half a sheet of plywood from all the way back here and push it through and get a perfectly straight cut whereas in the previous shop that i rented that before we moved in here we had the table saw that had a bed of over three meters which meant that you could support a full sheet of plywood and cut it in any direction you wanted and here's why that's so useful so let's say you want to break down a relatively large sheet of plywood into smaller pieces now if you want those pieces to be a bunch of long straight strips you can do that just fine on any table saw or a table saw like this just like we talked about using the fence and pushing it through manually and that works really well because the piece of wood that you have is really long and the fence that you're supporting it with is also really long so you're gonna get straight cuts by pushing it through like this now where the real benefit comes in is if you're trying to do a cut that wouldn't have as much support on this side let's say let's say you want to cut this board into a bunch of strips like this doing that on a table saw without this lighting feature would mean trying to balance this long piece of wood all the way out there and supporting it with only the side here pushing it through by sliding it over the table trying to maintain the straightness and the support against this fence which with long pieces especially if they're heavy can be really tricky whereas if you have the slidey bit you can support a really long section of the board against this back fence here you don't have to slide it over the table you just hold it securely against the sliding bit here and then you push it through you can even pull back the fence here and use it as a stop block to make repeatable cuts of all the same dimension by pushing it against there doing a cut pushing it against there again repeating that process for as many pieces as you need so on a saw like this it's really easy to get square and parallel cuts now parallel cuts you can definitely get on any table saw as long as you have one side that has a straight edge by putting that straight edge up against the fence here and pushing it through you get two lines that are perfectly parallel relative to each other now where that doesn't necessarily work is if you have a board that doesn't have any straight lines to begin with because what would end up happening we're going to pretend that this is one of the sides of the board as long as the curve or the unevenness is bigger than the length of your support on the side here it's gonna follow along here and then your board is just gonna curve its way around the fence now yes that can be fixed if you make a custom sled or use a circular saw to make one straight end first but this saw can just do it out of the box to the degree that these coming boxes let me show you okay let's use this board as an example let's pretend that none of these edges are straight on this board like this edge is super uneven and has something going on like this and the same with this one right makes sense now i can start by putting my super uneven board up against the long fence here and then just keep pushing it against the fence as i'm sliding it through the blade which will give me one perfectly straight side here then i can flip it around push my perfectly straight side up against the fence if the board is super narrow i can clamp it in the front in the t-track system here hold it against the table push it through and you got two sides that are perfectly straight and perfectly 90 degrees relative to each other and then i can just keep repeating that process two more times for the two other sides then i should have a board with 90 degree edges that is perfectly rectangular and here's the trick to check if your board has perfectly square sides using just a ruler let's say you've already cut all four sides and you're hoping that they're all square and parallel and the board is perfect but how do you actually check it well you can just measure from corner to corner so measuring the diagonals and if you measure both of the diagonals on your board they should be the exact same dimension if they are there's a good chance that all your edges are perfectly 90 degrees and that your sides are parallel because if one of the corners wouldn't be 90 degrees that would automatically mean that the diagonals wouldn't be the same length now there is one exception to this where the diagonals measure the exact same but the board still isn't square and that is if you have two lines that are perfectly parallel and the two sides have the exact same angle leaning in or out relative to those sides then the diagonals would still measure the same thing but the board would be skewed out or in like this i've never had this happen to me but the way to check this is just to check the length of each side if the lengths are the same the diagonals are the same the board is perfectly square and parallel and that's a trick that i use every single time basically anytime i need something to be square so that is basically the main reason why i really like sliding table saws over table saws with a fixed base it all comes down to the saw's ability to support larger pieces of wood as you're pushing him through the saw blade talking about doing cuts on the table saw though there is one thing that i really want to talk about and that is one particular thing that is super dangerous on a table saw not only for a table saw like this but any sort of table saw and i see that thing being done all the time by people on youtube and it can be super dangerous so here's the thing that i see people doing all the time and that i think is probably the most dangerous thing you can do on a table saw so let's say i want to cut this board in half like this and what i see a ton of people doing is just using the fence here setting the fence and then pushing this thing through which probably nine out of ten times will work just fine but you remember the example that we just talked about with the big long board that is hard to support against this edge here it's the same exact thing with the small board it can be super hard to keep this straight so what happens is as you push this board through because you have so little support it's very easy to push it a little uneven let's say you push it a little bit too much here the back edge of the board here will grab the back of the saw blade wedge itself and as it does that it gets more wedged and more wedged and the saw blade has so much power that it will just shoot this whole thing back at you probably in your face maybe cut your fingers at the same time and that is what's called kickback it's super dangerous it's really easy to get hurt and you should never do it now here's a pretty good guy for whether or not the cut is dangerous or not the thing is that the smaller the board the more likely it is to be dangerous but the general rule is that if the piece that you're cutting is wider than it's long it's gonna have a tendency to wedge itself in between the blade and the fence you can think of it just like one of those old cabinet drawers that will always get stuck it's always the long wide ones that aren't that deep that gets stuck when you're trying to pull them out right whereas the long ones are always super easy to pull out that is because relative to the width they have a lot of support on the sides so let's say i want to cut this board in half like this no problem because i will have so much support on the side here that this board will never like try to wedge itself in between the blade also if the board is longer than the total distance from the front of the blade to the back of the riding knife it will also be less likely for it to be able to wedge itself and kick back on you it might still rock back and forth and give you a really ugly cut but at least it won't fly you in the face and cut your fingers off now here's the way around this and it's super easy on a regular table saw without the sliding bit on the side you push this entire side fence out of the way and you use the guide that came with it to do those cuts or even better you can make a crosscut sled that fits in the t-tracks and use that now on a cell like this you just use this fence here like there cut no problem now there's one quick thing that i want to mention that applies to sliding table saws more so than table saws without the sliding base and that is the ability to use both fences at the same time what i mean by that is that you can use the fence here to set a specific width of the board that you want to cut push it up against it and then cut through what that allows you to do is that if you have a long board you can do repeatable cuts and all the pieces will end up the same if you do that really important is that the side fence here needs to be all the way back here and stop before the saw blade begins so that as you're cutting it and the piece that is left over on the side here can't get wedged in between the fence and the saw blade and kickback when you're cutting something only the piece that you're holding is supposed to be against the fence so like if i'm holding here and pushing it through the bit that will fall off on the other side cannot touch a fence also while we're talking about safety don't get your fingers too close to the saw blade i sometimes get comments in some of my videos saying that my fingers are way too close never do any sort of cuts where you feel like your fingers are uncomfortably close to the saw blade i always have a push stick right next to my saw and i use it all the time if you're ever in dial always use a push stick and other than that this side is basically the same as any other table saw i can raise and lower the blade and i can tilt the saw blade up to 45 degrees to one side and the last feature that i haven't mentioned yet is that this entire guide can swivel out at an angle if you want to do angle cuts but i never use this if i do angle cuts i'll just do them with my track saw now i know that i've been talking about this style of saw as if it's just miles better than any other table saw on all fronts out there which is not true there's definitely things that about this saw there are worse than on other table saws one thing is that it just has a lot more moving parts which means a lot more adjusting on a regular table saw you have one big cast table and a saw blade is sticking up through it there's hardly anything you really need to adjust other than the fence maybe on this thing you have this entire bed that needs to be level at the same height with this side the slidey bit needs to be parallel to the saw blade this fence needs to be 90 degrees to the saw blade and 90 degrees to this fence especially with an old saw like this that has been through a lot we need to do small adjustments on it all the time another thing is that whereas this saw is basically the same footprint as any other table saw like a sawstop for instance the bigger ones end up having a lot bigger footprint so you need to dedicate much more space in your workshop for us all like that talking about sawstop that's one of the things that none of these style saws have for those of you who aren't familiar with sawstop it's a saw that has a safety feature that detects if your finger touches the blade and will quickly retract it which will keep you from losing your fingers and to my knowledge sustop is the only company that has the technology because they have the patent on it and unfortunately sawstop don't make sliding table saws like this yes i know that you can buy like a slidey bit that you can bolt on to a saw stop but it lives way outside the saw it's super small it doesn't have a reach it's just not the same thing so this video is not meant to be a video about how much better this style table saw is to the other ones i know that what style of table saw you're used to is mostly dependent on where in the world you live as some styles of saws are much more popular here in europe and some are more popular in other places in the world like the states this is just meant to be a video about some of the cool features that i really like about this style song and since you guys kept asking for it i figured i'd make a video about it i hope you enjoyed this video about me just talking about a table saw instead of actually building something the reason for that is that i'm working on a much bigger project involving hundreds of hours of 3d printing and a bunch of other really cool stuff which will hopefully be done for next week's video so if you want to see that make sure you subscribe and ring that bell so you get notified when i upload that video also if you're interested i'll leave a link to a couple of the manufacturers that make table saws like this if you want to go check it out but be warned they have a tendency to be super expensive that will be it for this video thanks for watching make sure to like and subscribe and i'll see you guys in the next video bye bye

Channel: Alexandre Chappel

Views: 244,769

Rating: 4.8997431 out of 5

Keywords: table saw, tablesaw, sawstop, felder, altendorf, tips and tricks, woodworking tips, woodworking tools, tools, old tools, diy, howto, how to, carpentry tools, sliding table saw, panel saw, world's best, best saw ever

Id: 3ySMqH17Pdc

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020