this made me get rid of my table saw

I am a huge proponent of a table saw look around my small apartment garage and you won't find a miter saw well actually that's a little bit of a lie I do have this one but that thing is a piece of crap I use my table saw virtually every single cutting operation and whatever I'm building projects from furniture to shop projects to outdoor games the table saw is truly the heart of my shop and after 3 years of using one almost every single Le day I'm finally getting rid of mine this is the rigid SL delelta R 4560 and I've had it for about one and 1/2 years when I first got it just like everybody else when they get new tools I was pretty thrilled this saw was a massive upgrade over the job site table saw that I started woodworking on but even with the job site saw I was able to make high-end furniture that I sold for thousands of dollars was that thing accurate No well was it reliable no was it quiet definitely not but that $200 saw that I bought was truly the thing that launched this business into what it is today I had to recalibrate that saw every day and I was never really able to rely on any of the measurements now one thing that drove me absolutely nuts on my old saw was that the height adjustment and bevel adjustment were on the exact same dial it was was near impossible to change the height of the blade without bumping the bevel off and making the blade no longer square with the table but with a boatload of patience I was able to make it work for me and created tons of furniture with it well that was all until one day when the motor fell out of the bottom while I was building a media console and actually you can move this entire motor by your hand now that was certainly a scary SC day for me shortly after that super scary event I upgraded to this larger rigid R 4560 and I thought it was going to solve all of my problems it was substantially more stable with its cast iron table it has a drastically larger working surface and best of all the blade actually stayed locked in when I set it to 90° that's an often overlooked feature I made a video all about the upgrade including the full setup the discussing in detail how exactly my first job site saw broke and I'll leave a link to that video down the description below if you want to know more about that but at that time I was pumped about getting this new saw there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that I had the new tool Euphoria everything just seemed perfect about the saw and I didn't see a single shortcoming but as you know that Euphoria very quickly wears off it wasn't more than about two weeks that I had started noticing things that would drive me absolutely nuts about this saw none of those issues seemed to really be a massive disservice or completely dismiss the saw but they did kind of irritate me so shortly afterwards I made a follow-up video that was more of a long-term review about the specific saw to warn people about both the pros and the cons of this thing and act as a long-term formal review I'll leave a link in the description to that video as well if you want to check that one out only problem is just a few weeks after making that video it was like someone turned on the floodgates of issues and I started really tuning in to all of the uh let's call them quirks about this saw first the dust collection Port is pretty much useless sure this thing covers the blade substantially better than my job site saw does and catches a lot of the Dust but the problem is it's barely held on and the sawdust leaks out of the bottom like crazy second this far side of the saw had a giant hole that I would constantly drop things through and it drove me nuts I was able to solve that problem by making this DIY router table insert so that wasn't too big of a deal if you were interested in making one of these of your own I made a full video in free plans that are available linked down in the description below if you're interested and it will work for any table saw that's got open side like this but on the other side of the saw there are these super cheap flimsy stamped sheet metal wings that are nowhere close to being flat and they're attached to the third major problem of the saw and that's these rails the rails that the fence slide on and subsequently that the wings on either side of the saw are attached to are split in half so they can fit inside of a smaller box during chipping and save the company a couple dollars the problem with with that is no matter how hard you tighten them to the saw any small amount of weight will cause them to bow or deflect which leads you to no longer have a flat work surface and causes your fence to get stuck which is super annoying speaking of the fence the fourth major issue I had was that the fence would go out of calibration constantly like multiple times a day so bad that I had bought a dedicated screwdriver that I keep right here just to adjust it when it happens not if but when it happens because those rails would move that causes the fence to get pulled slightly out of alignment so sometimes my fence would kick out away from a blade which isn't a huge deal but other times my fence would kick in towards the blade which is a recipe for some nasty Kickback not to mention that I've had to replace this locking handle three times because because the metal is so soft that the threads that hold the bolt in have ripped out and lastly a few months ago the mechanism that locks the blade in place at a certain height broke so I can no longer make accurate or repeatable D Cuts with all that said I know that I probably use this saw way more than it's intended for and I still think that at the $600 price point it's a pretty solid deal but for me it's no longer enough so it's time to get rid of this thing and grab something that will suit my needs a little bit better well things certainly look a little different now that the table saw is completely gone however all that empty space is not going to last long because this thing just showed up and I'm sure that you're just excited as I am so let's get everything off this pallet and see what we got I know the first question that people are going to ask is well what happened to my old saw where is it can I pick it up and the simple answer to the that is unfortunately no somebody locally in my community already picked it up and it is back in their shop and they're using this saw so unfortunately it's not available anymore and if you do want to be alerted about times where I'm getting rid of tools and want to grab stuff like that Instagram is where I post that so make sure to follow me over there if that's something that you want now I know that everybody just immediately wants me to cut into this box and check out the table saw but there's one thing I need to do first over here in this m mive collection of boxes I have the mobile Bas because that thing is so heavy there is no way I'm taking it off the pallet without having the mobile Bas already built I don't think for most people mobile bases are really all that necessary I mean who really moves their table saw all the time right for most people they're going to take their table saw out set it up once and probably leave it in the same spot for a long long period of time making the most mobile base kind of unnecessary I thought that this part of the mobile base was going to be a little bit more visible uh once I had the table saw fully assembled so I took tons of time of making sure that it would looked really nice had this perfectly smooth epoxy coat on it but once I put the saw on this you'll realize that I just wasted a boatload of time I should have just painted the thing and moved on with my life and once all those holes are drilled I can take the corner brackets put the bolts through put a washer lock washer and nut and then tighten everything down to hold all these different corner pieces to the plywood base so with that mobile base together let's crack into the table saw I don't think this is going to work let's try this I'm an idiot all you do is break [Music] these oh supposed to go smoother than that oh gosh there we go right now this is like a 10 out of 10 for me it's like walking downstairs Christmas morning only to see your packages wrapped up in the ribbon that you know how to undo but you just can't figure it out right at the moment can you guess what it is yet this is a cabinet table saw and I know that some people are going to get really upset because I've already had people message me saying that the only reason they follow me is because I have a job site table saw like them and I totally get that because it's really neat when you watch people online and you can identify with them because they have the exact same tools as you do upgrading to this bigger table saw is just a step in my progression or my Evolution as a woodworker it will probably be a lot easier if I remove the shipping brace first the last thing I'm going to say about this is that I think one of the worst things that Woodworkers in General do is that they look at tools and think that if they don't have a specific tool they can't do a specific task that could not be further from the truth in all my videos I try really hard to show all these different processes you know things like how to Mill Lumber without owning a joiner and stuff like that all of that is done with the goal of empowering people to show them that even with really really limited tools they can still get the exact same tasks done the only thing that's different is the time all right so the mobile base is all situated and it's time to get this saw off the pallet onto the base but because I'm stubborn I'm not going to ask for help so time to throw my back out here we go oh my God okay yep she's heavy let's try this all right let looks promising see if we we can kind of tilt it on here and yes I got steel toe boots on just in case now to give you an idea this cabinet weighs about 3 or 400 lb by itself no injuries how about that so look at how easily it moves on that mobile base and the top is gold but I'm going to talk about that a little bit later and it has this nasty like oil coating thing I think it helps prevent it rust during shipping but I want to get all this off because it's gross and it'll stain your clothes if you get it on no oh goodness so you're probably wondering why the saw is gold and not that typical gray silver color of cast iron well this specific saw has a specialty coating on it and a lot of people call it a tin coating because hold on oh that was satisfying all right so a lot of people called it a tin coating because it's spelled t i n but if you remember back from your college chemistry mysty days you know that because the ey is lowercase it's actually titanium nitride now titanium nitride is an extremely hard ceramic material often used as a physical vapor deposition coating on titanium Alloys and a bunch of other words that I don't know what they mean to improve the substrate surface properties and yeah I read that from Wikipedia now what does that mean for normal people like you and me outside of the gold kind of looking neat they claim that it provides superb rust protection and less friction now is there any evidence to back that up I don't know it's probably like the organic vegetable industry you just have to believe them now one of the major downsides of getting a cabinet saw like this is having to align these pieces perfectly now even if you do manage to get the tables perfectly aligned and all the bolts tightened down you'll probably notice sometimes that if you put a straight edge across everything there is a little bit of a gap but that can easily be fixed and it's normal now since the side extension on the saw was falling downward what I want to do is put a shim at the bottom that way when I tighten everything back up it will actually pull the table upward this is one of the major downsides of working with a larger saw because the components are so heavy it's really hard to unpackage and get everything assembled I could not get this out of the box without absolutely destroying this thing and even once I finally got the box open this piece was crazy heavy well that one was disappointing definitely not as satisfying as the others but let's get this thing installed one of the things that I really started to notice as I was building the saw is I was comparing it a lot to my previous two saws this Wing is again slightly out of of alignment but with a more expensive saw that comes in multiple pieces you actually have the ability to very precisely adjust and fine-tune everything now with a cheaper saw like the job site saw that I started out with adjusting things on that was pretty much non-existent however if you're just getting started in woodworking I would actually argue that having a saw that doesn't have tons and tons of adjustment and calibration requirements is actually better because it substantially lowers the barrier of entry and doesn't make you get caught up in mundane TKS like just perfectly calibrating your soul you just take the saw out of the box turn it on and start building your projects there is no question that getting the extension Wings perfectly aligned and leveled is without a doubt the most time consuming part of putting a table saw together but now that that's done let's grab the front and rear rails and attach them to the saw now if you recall earlier in the video I talked about my prior saw saw my rigid contractor saw thing and those front and rear rails o that was tough to say rear rails there we go they were in two separate pieces which caused me to have a lot of setup and calibration issues with the saw over time but because this saw has rails that are single pieces once I set it up I should be fine for a while between buying expensive tools accessories and lumber doing woodworking projects like this can get expensive I am constantly the person searching around for the best deal which is why I've been using rutin since 2012 don't believe me here's a screenshot rakitin is the largest cashback site which partners with over 3,500 of the biggest name brands like Ace Hardware Lowe's Walmart and tons of other brands you already shop with to bring you cash back coupons and promo codes all for free you just click through the links found in rakitin and then shop the stores websites like you normally would or use the browser extension don't forget to use rutin when shopping to stack cash back on top of existing deals and get a $30 sign up bonus when you make a qualifying purchase to start saving simply sign up by clicking the link in the description and huge thanks to raketen for sponsoring today's video so if the front and back rail assembled to the table saw you'll notice that I have this large gap here and if you recall on my last table saw that Gap drove me absolutely nuts so I filled it with a router table now I did order the extension table that goes right here that's going to be the router table only problem is because of supply chain issues it's back ordered so I don't have it right now but I will be installing it in the near future I wanted to address that because I knew that people are going to ask down in the comments but let's continue the setup before ordering the soft for myself one of the things that I was really curious about and I talked to several people about out was the fence on the saw I'll show you a little bit more later but it's really unique and it's actually two fences in one the only assembly that was required for this fence was to twist on this little knob and then I could test what everyone talks about look how smooth this fence moves you give it a little push and it just keeps gliding now of course this fence is not perfectly aligned right out of the box there's a huge gap but this fence has a bunch of little knobby Doodles on it that you can easily adjust so that you can align the fence perfectly so you have just a small Gap underneath the fence now if you remember earlier I said that this fence is actually two fences in one and so if you undo the knobs on the side you can go from a low fence to a high fence now I will likely keep my fence in this High position 90 some per of the time but when I need to make really thin cuts by putting it in the low position I can get my hand and push scks closer to the blade and just makes everything a little bit safer and easier and here's another reason why I decide to go with this saw right now I'm in an apartment wood shop where I'm stuck with 120 volts on a single circuit and I have no ability to get to the breaker panel or anything to upgrade that so the saw will work for me now and when I move out of this in the future hint hint I will be able to upgrade the saw to 220 or 240 volt whatever you want to call it and get a little bit more power a little bit more juice out of the saw what the heck I'm missing a pin well that's a little bit of a bummer I'm missing a pin on the bottom one so the door is not going to open and close correctly now Harvey is a pretty small company and I wanted to know what the experience was going to be like reaching out to customer support so I did not tell them that I have a YouTube channel or any social media presence I just filled out the regular contact information like any body else would and to my surprise they got back to me within just a few hours and overnighted me a replacement piece that's pretty cool the next piece that I'm adding on here is the overarm dust collection and to be completely honest with you I'm not really sure what I think about this I know a lot of people who have saw stops and lagunas and other saws like that have this on their saw and they say that even with a really good dust collector it's not great in my dust collector is really really bad so I have a feeling this probably isn't going to do much of an upgrade for me but I might as well install it right now what I'm doing here is making a small alteration to the washer thingy that holds the blade on the arbor as you can see it looks like European blades have these little cutouts in them with the screws that sit in them I don't know none of my blades do so I'm just going to remove those screws and then I can easily attach any blade that I have onto the arbor no problem and speaking of the blade the one thing surrounding the blade that I definitely need to dial in right now is the levelness of the throat plate super easy just put a straight edge across it and use the small set screws in until that thing is perfectly level with the surface of the table saw so now that I've got the table saw set up in my shop exactly where I want it to go you might have noticed that this front rail doesn't have any measurings or markings of where to align the fence to but thankfully before throwing away all the boxes and trash I did find this adhesive tape measure that I'm going to apply I have to say I do find it a little strange that this wasn't already applied to the front rail but it's an easy fix in my short time with the saw I've already noticed that this ability to remove the ring knife without having to take out the throat plate is super super handy but to get this tape aligned I'm basically just going to move the fence all the way over touching the blade and then make a mark on my fence where I need to put down this adhesive measuring tape and don't worry I can make a slight alteration to the exact alignment in a future step no problem so now that tape is lined up roughly where that zero Mark is I can set my fence back on top of the rail and then position those little window guer mirror thingies to exactly where they need to be all right that is everything attached to this table saw and it's completely set up but let's see if this thing is actually accurate and if not let's change it the first and often most difficult thing to get in line on table saw is making sure that the blade is perfectly parallel with your miter SLS I'm going to use a couple specialty tools to make sure that this thing is dialed in perfectly now are these specialty tools required to set up your table saw absolutely not you can 100% use the standard combination Square method that a lot of people use however I find it kind of fun to really Chase Perfection and get things as accurate as possible so I don't mind spending a little bit of extra money on some tools like this this is basically just a dial indicator that you can run through your miter slot as you can see it is dead flat so that's really good now luckily my saw was set on absolutely perfect from the factory but if your saw wasn't there are four easily accessible bolts loaded underneath the table saw all you have to do loosen those adjust the slightly until your miter slot is perfectly calibrated with the blade and remember that hinge that was missing a PIN to my surprise they overnighted me this hinge and I got it in about 2 days now here's a test for some of you while you're watching this video did you notice that there was something on the saw that was broken the entire time I was assembling it well I did not realize that until I was reviewing the footage to make this video that the blade guard was completely cracked so they sent me out of replace replacement no questions asked so now that I know that my blade is perfectly parallel with my miter slot the next thing I need to do is make sure that my fence is perfectly parallel with my blade again I'm going to use that same saw gauge thingy with the dial indicator and you can see that it's already uh not straight all right that turned to be way off but there's an easy and quick adjustment now this is a feature that I've never seen on any other table saw the front rail has this little cutout spot so that I can easily stick an allen wrench into the little adjustment screw and align my table saw fence perfectly all it takes is a couple small turns and I can bring that dial indicator out again and get things lined up so that it is perfectly straight if not tilted a little bit away from the blade now even though this table saw has this gold coating again remember it's not tin it's titanium nitride that has some fancy chemical properties and it's not supposed to rust and all kinds of stuff like that I don't trust it so I'm going to clean the entire table saw surface off again with some mineral spirits and then apply some past wax this will just help prevent rust and make things super super smooth to run your wood across that's what she said the application is super easy just apply a thick layer let it dry a little bit it and then buff it off hey look router table just showed up this thing 113 lbs let's throw my back out okay get this out of the way all right get it up remember lift with your back not your legs okay there if we can do this now this part of the table saw was backordered but it actually showed up you know relatively fast after my main table saw did but this thing was crazy crazy heavy to put on there I know 100 lb doesn't seem like a lot but when it's this really weird shaped box that doesn't really have any handles or anything 100 lb is a lot to lift up all right now let's move the saw out of the way in the past I did have a separate router table from my table saw but with the super small shop space that I'm in I found that having the router table built into the side of the table saw not only gives me a larger work surface but saves a tremendous amount of space because honestly I really don't use my rter table all that much especially not enough to justify taking up important real estate inside the shop that I really can't afford to lose this thing is a solid piece of cast iron so it's really hard to maneuver this thing around especially if I have to try to lift this put it in place and attach it to my table saw so I took a tip from Nick from Key Woodworks about getting all my Festool sustainers no God please no no no no that's going to trigger some people out there but I grabbed all my fesol sustainers and stacked up on a little cart so I can easily move this table over and for the reveal of the router table I got to admit I'm bummed that this one isn't gold like the rest of the table saw but hey can't have everything your way right and then that's when I realized that the table wasn't quite tall enough to be able to connect to my table saw so I need to grab another sustainer to bump this thing up just a little bit so do all the angry people in the comments that get so mad when I buy tools that come in sustainers this is why I need them for the one time a year to support something heavy definitely worth the cost just like the other Wings these go on with some bolts washers lock washers and nuts and all that kind of stuff but I think you get the point by now and with the router table securely attached to the table saw I also need to get underneath the router table and attach the dust collection bucket so let's get these sustainers out of the way yeah I didn't see this one coming uh-oh apparently I completely forgot about physics during this moment Cris is averted obviously since all of that weight was on the far side of the table saw unsupported of course it was going to tip over got the legs let's get these in and I'm sure if I would have read the instructions it would have told me to put these on hopefully I don't don't die under here tell you that was a close call well that was certainly scary but luckily no injuries uh just a lesson in physics that I apparently had forgotten but let's get back to assembling this thing I got a few more bolts left over where I need to attach the router table to the cast iron wing and because the table saw is up on the mobile base those legs aren't going to be able to reach the ground because it's lifted up another inch or two so inside of the package comes these little spacers that allow you to just make the end of the saw touch the ground I guess this was one thing that I definitely was a little bit nervous about when I got the saw because if you look online nowhere in their instruction manual or packing list or anything like that does it say it comes with these spacers but I'm glad that they're in there and you can see that I've got all the extension Wings perfectly level and align with each other all right so now that I've got got all the extensions in everything is perfectly flat there's one last piece that I need to add and if you've never used a router or a router table for that matter they make a ridiculous ridiculous amount of dust so underneath the router table I'm going to be installing this router table dust collection cabinet thing now if this whole setup seems a little ridiculous and a little bit Out Of Reach I totally get it I know that this stuff is really expensive but a couple months ago I made a series of videos all about how to make your very own DIY table saw router table setup that included making the top platform and the dust collection box those are honestly pretty basic projects and in those videos that I'll link down in the description below I'd take you through every single step and I provided free plans so there were always always alternatives to buying expensive factorymade things and I can already predict what people are thinking oh my gosh Eric you don't have that Craig router lift anymore that means that thing sucks right no that was honestly a fantastic router lift I just gave that to the person in my community who picked up the saw so I figured I'd just educate myself pick up a new router and router lift and see how this one works but speaking of things working honestly it doesn't seem like this mobile base works very well now that I have the router table extension on it so I thought maybe if I lift the table saw up and rotate at 180° it might have a better leverage Point yep that's much easier but to be completely honest with you I don't think this works super well with the router table on but it's definitely better all right so with the table saw all set up we're not quite done there's still some accessories that I definitely want to add to this thing now this is one of the table saw accessories I get asked about more than anything else and it's this red rail here and it's called the woodpecker's rip flip it's basically like a stop block for my fence so that you can bring your fence back to repeatable positions and would I spend the several hundred on it probably not but it's nice to have all right so with that on I'm also going to need a miter gauge miter gauges are a little weird most saws come with one that is an absolute piece of crap pure unadulterated crap because of that I've tried just about every brand on the market I've done the incra the Rockler the jessum I've actually had this Harvey one before and I got rid of it I've also had the Craig and now I'm going to go back to this Harvey one and kind of see what I like see if it's any different when I used this one in the past I truly had no issues I just had some other miter gauges that I wanted to try out and I just didn't have the room to hold this one so I sold it there is not some big story about it failing on me in the past I just had to make space all right so with that on there's one last accessory I want to add and that's the stock guides but these require that I attach it to the fence and this is a brand new fence so I do not want to drill into it so I figured this would be the perfect time to grab a piece of wood and make a test cut with the saw all right so let's get this thing plugged [Music] in what the kind of plug is this I'll be back so here is the plug that this saw came with which is really really weird looking and I don't have anything that this can plug into and this is what a standard US plug looks like so it looks like I need to run to the store and uh pick up an adapter all right I'm back picked up this little adapter thing that I can put the weird looking plug in here and then this is the plug that I need on the other side see if it works all right we got the adapter here do the weird plug into this side all right it fits uh put this in here let's give it a shot she works so this is truly my first cut on the table saw I want to try to use that blade guard thing as much as I can but to be honest with you it really just feels like it's completely in the way and doesn't it kind of make filming a little awkward but this isn't anything crazy I basically just cut a long piece of Walnut and then I'm going to attach it to a short piece of Walnut with a little CA glue and accelerator so I don't have to wait and then I'm going to pre-drill and counter sync before driving in some screws to permanently hold those two pieces together and with a forcer bit I drill out these I think they're 2 and A4 or 2 and 1/2 in diameter holes to drop in these mag switch things and if you've never seen these before they're basically super super strong I think these magnets hold 150 lb each and they're switchable so all I have to do is switch the button and the magnet is on or the magnet is off of course I'll put links to all the tools all the accessories and everything down in the description below but you can see how that little flap holds it on the end of the fence and I can flip the magnets on and permanently attached as you can see and then if I turn the magnets off I can very quickly and easily remove these if I ever need to and just as easily attach them back on by flipping those magnets back so the purpose of these stock guyses is they have these angled rollers that automatically push your workpiece down forward and towards the fence making a much safer table saw cut now I think it is important to be transparent about stuff like this no I did not buy this saw Harvey was nice enough to send it out to me but part of my agreement with them was that I am not going to sign a contract or anything that says I have to tell you good things about this saw so if I were to use this saw for a couple months couple years and something breaks on it or I just absolutely hate something on the saw I am going to tell you I am under no obligation to say anything positive at all with this saw but so far this thing is a massive upgrade over my old contractor saw and I cannot wait to get some projects done with this thing now one thing that I think I am going to pretty much immediately change on the saw is the mobile Bas because there's a ton of weight from the router table that kind of can levers it off to the side this mobile base is pretty much useless also since this dust collection bucket here is substantially larger than my older one I no longer have room to store this cabinet underneath my table sauce so I think I'm going to have to come up with a new solution to storing all of my push sticks and other kinds of accessories I should also mention that not every video I release is in chronological order because it takes a while sometimes to get sponsors to approve certain videos and I have prior obligations and all kinds of stuff like that so yes it is very possible that this video comes out and then you see other videos come out in the future of me using my old saw that is not because this thing has failed me it's because they just weren't releasing chronological order

Channel: Spencley Design Co.

Views: 562,458

Keywords: eric spencley, spencley design, spencley design co, spencely, woodworking

Id: VierSsPkCXo

Length: 36min 30sec (2190 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023