Top 4 Woodworking Machines, Rob Cosman's Opinion

hi folks I'm Rob Kazem and topic for the newsletter this month is woodworking machines what do you need and what should you buy and I love talking about this because it's my favorite hobby buying old machines and fixing them up I'm going to give you my top four machines first one is going to be the table saw so let's spend a minute here pretty hard to recommend anything outside of a saw stop today they may they make the best best table so I think that's ever been built in this size it has the largest top great fence blade tilts away from the fence in case you're not familiar most table saws prior meant that the blade tilted into the fence so if you were trying to cut a miter on the on a top of a chest of drawers for example when you're cutting your your first one you're having to cut and you're trapping a piece of wood in the air which is very unsafe and then when you go to cut the other one you've got the point of the miter that's gonna slide underneath the fence cutting tilting away from the fans is a huge advantage and the more you use it the more you'll come to realize that the safety feature is second to none lots of capacity 52 inches to the right of the blade so you can do everything you need with a full sheet of plywood so this is your number one tool you can use it to joint an edge I'm not gonna get into showing you all that right now but you can actually join an edge with it you can even use it for a planer on stuff that's not any wider than six inches you can make a cut flip it over on its edge and make another cut and they'll get you very close so great tool now if you're gonna buy one make sure you have rip blade and if not a cross got at least a combination blade there were times when it'll do a better job that would be number one number two would be a jointer and if you're gonna buy a jointer I'd stay away from the four-inch I'd even stay away from the six-inch may so get an 8-inch and it's going to be able to do most things you're gonna want the jointer for you buy a rough beats a rough lumber you need to face joint at first that means make one side flat that you can then process everything from referencing off of that one flat face eight inch jointer I'll come back and talk to you a little more specific about machines but you want to make sure that the jointer you buy has an adjustable outfeed table the infeed table always adjusts by that I mean as you lower this table you're gonna take a heavier cut but you want to be able to adjust your outfeed table as well to get it parallel with the top of your cutting circle it just offers you a lot more features than the kind the old kind that didn't have or I had a fixed I would feed table number three tool I'm actually gonna put the drill press in front of the number four but you're gonna want to drill press so many of the operations when your woodworking requires something in terms of being drilled and I think that just this gets used a ton in our shop in fact I've got 18 of them but you need a drill press I would make sure you had a drill press it had an adjustable table I have several that don't you just loosen them and then you got to catch them as they fall but having adjustable table is a big deal you always want to keep it tight as it tightens it writes itself which means in the relaxed position this actually drops down so it's no longer Square to this spindle but tighten it and it pulls that up so make sure you do that what else nice to have a work light on it but other than that there's not a whole lot of details you need it does have adjustable variable speed for that you have to change the pulleys which is a bit of a hassle and you don't have to do it that often but if you're dealing with any large diameter cutters you're gonna want to slow it down fourth tool is a bandsaw and this is some people would say this could actually replace the table saw I don't think so but it certainly is extremely versatile this is a 15 inch I don't think I'd get anything too much smaller than that the reason is the diameter of the wheel the smaller that the diameters are the short of the the shorter it's not the word I want the throat so this allows me almost 15 inches between the inside of the column and the blade so if you get a small diameter an 8-inch wheel you've only got seven and a half inches in there but it also means that your blade has to flex a whole lot more bigger wheels you're gonna get a little more I wouldn't call them heavy duty but medium duty I'm gonna talk to you more specifically about brands as well but bandsaw would be number four and if you wanted to go on from there I'd probably put my thickness planer as number five but if you're working with a budget obviously you have to do one at a time now I want to talk to you about smore specifically about brands this is a my saw stop and as I said it's pretty hard to recommend anything outside of a soft stop today because all the safety features backed in the back of the room where you see Ken he's working on an old you know saw Delta made what I would call the industry standard for years I think was originally developed in the late 1930s and the parts were interchangeable right up until five years ago or wherever when they stopped making them but it's a there's a robust machine usually had anywhere from a horse and a half to three horsepower motor on it good solid everything just boat it was great cast iron you want cast iron for stability it absorbs vibration I don't kind of bother walking down there but that was a great machine the safety features the saw stop trumps everything else so you really can't go beyond this today if you're serious about it and I've got friends that are missing parts of their fingers hello Luther who was gonna buy a saw stop but then he decided not to much money cut the end of his finger off and the next day we went and bought the saw stop what would have happened if he just done that a day before asking next time you see him all right what do we go to next was a jointer yeah so let me let me tell you a little more about this I prefer to buy old equipment I really can't even think with the exception of saw stop I can't think of a brand name today that I would go out and buy new and think I was getting a better machine than would you could buy from stuff made 4050 years ago even older so this is a Rockwell but this is probably somewhere in the 1970s still made in the u.s. means the castings were done and they were seasoned properly so that and they were ground nice and flat just a just a really good solid machine has a good solid fence completely adjustable now I rarely ever have my fence anything but 90 degrees but this is designed so you can tilt it 45 as much as 45 degrees in that direction like I said I rarely ever do that and you can move it forward and back to expose or cover more of the cutter head this has the segmented head and I did a video on that recently but this is probably next to the saw stop this would be the most significant invention improvement in woodworking power tools in the last 50 years and if you're not familiar with this the traditional over here this is a big 16 inch that we haven't we're just in the process of getting it ready to hook up this has the traditional straight knife so there are three knives and that's a knife right there that runs side to side and it's it's great it's easy to deal with easy to adjust but it's cutting performance has been cutting performance has been vastly surpassed by these new segmented heads if you look closely the cutters excuse me our four-sided so each one of these little carbide Chiclets looks to be about five eighths of an inch in diameter or in depth width whatever they're numbered one two three four so you've got four sharp cutting surfaces if this one gets dull or chipped all you have to do is loosen this screw rotate it itself centers and tighten it up again so instead of having to go through and change knives which is it's not as bad on a jointer as it is not a thickness planer but it's still a task you just simply replace the cutter or rotate it to a sharp a sharp edge and you're all set and ready to go the only downside to refitting a head like this on an older jointer on the older jointers you always put your knives in your straight knives and you set them to be parallel to the outfeed table well in this case there's nothing adjustable so that cutting circle which is predetermined has to be made to be parallel to the to the outfeed table in some cases you may have to go in there and shim these blocks at that the bearings to bring that into alignment with the outfeed table so a little bit of an issue but not not a game-changer cast iron lengths the longer your jointer is the more accurate is going to be I think this one is six feet no not quite five foot seven inches height in case you're interested this is 32 inches which is a nice working height for the average person the adjusted the depth adjustment is a spin wheel in here and I this one needs to be loosened up a little bit it's kind of stiff we just bought this not that long ago and been process of restoring it you can lock the table I don't bother locking the infeed table I'd lock the outfeed table now the significance of the outfeed table you want to be able to line that up perfectly with the top of the cutting circle and by doing that you loosen the knob and then it has no spin hand wheel here as well and you would just simply move that until when you're checking as the board is coming across the infeed table and goes over the cutter what's been removed by the cutter needs to be accounted for with the outfeed table which means you don't want to see a gap between the newly cut surface and the OFI table nor do you want that board to ride up on this when it meets it it needs to be it's on the same level as the top of the cutting circle and that takes a little bit of work to do but it's not it's not something that you can't easily pick up and learn how heavy machine weighs about 500 pounds big advantage when it comes to stability if you look down in here I've changed most all of the belts in our shop and we now use actually I'll show you a piece right here we use what do they call Jake link belts so the old-style belts which I had a bunch of them right here a minute ago and you want to do with them anyway I can't find them but it was to be a solid belt the link belts are quieter they have a better grip and there's less friction involved that they're expensive how much one of those how much 54 for feet so there's almost $100 in each one of these so each one of these was $100 and we've got one more to go so it's expensive but performance I think the performance warrants the price power you can run an 8 inch jointer on a 1 horsepower I don't think I'd go less than that I think we've got an inch and 3/4 horse on this which we never stole it that's what I can tell you about a jointer critical machine in the shop let's go over here to the drill press actually let's let's step right back here and I'll give you an example of a good machine but something that's lacking so this is a general general was main it made in Drummondville Quebec it was the last as far as I know it was the last North American manufacturer of woodworking equipment where they actually were building stuff right here in our soil great machines this company essentially got its start by providing public schools with woodworking equipment for their programs so their criteria was it had to be simple to operate it had to be indestructible and easy to maintain and the nice thing about these belts bearings and motors are the only things that were ever going to go and all three are easy to replace if you broke a casting that's a different story but for the most part those three things are the only maintenance issue the it's kind of stepped pulley so as you change from from the leverage that occurs going from a large pulley to a small pulley or small puts a large pool you're gonna go from the spindle being faster or slower and more torque and you simply this lever unlocks and allows you to move the motor back just to take up the slop or to give you some slack in order to make that change the nice thing about this it has a quill lock so this is the quill and you can lock it by squeezing this piece and hold it in position you can also there's another one right here that you can adjust and that's to get remember get rid of as much slop as you as you possibly can and that's what I dislike about some of the newer machines with the quill fully extended you can sit there and you can wiggle that thing quite a bit and it's annoying because that run out we call it makes for inaccuracies when you're drilling the downside to this got a small work table the table is adjustable you can turn it you know I think you can go oh I think you can go 45 degrees in both directions at least but there's no adjustment for the table you can't wind the table up or down so you simply loosen that lever holding this manually get it the height you want a lot of lowering is easy raising it's a bit of an issue and then snug it up there's your Chuck key for for changing bits but it's a good machine if it wasn't for that adjustment on the on the height of the table it would be fantastic it's got a nice big heavy cast-iron base now that's a lot bigger than most and it's a lot heavier which just means it's going to be a lot more stable ideally it should be bolted to the floor but it's heavy enough that it'll stay there now if we contrast that one there is a work light available on that but it's an it's an accessory that you had to buy so this is one made by jet which is readily available as I mentioned earlier same I think you have few more options when it comes to speeds but you know if you look at this available speeds anywhere from 200 rpm to thirty 630 well two hundred five hundred eight hundred actually it goes from two hundred three two hundred to 93 54:30 I can't imagine ever needing 350 as opposed to 430 or 290 so a bit ridiculous when it comes to that does have a work light tucked up in there which is nice it floods the area with light but I love the downside is it doesn't have a quill lock and if you I don't know if you notice but when I shook the quill over there there was no movement watch this to see how much movement there is that's really irritating drives me nuts and it comes like that a new machine this isn't that's not because of where it does have the the lever to raise and lower the table which is a really nice feature it's a round table and I don't have any issues with it it is larger space it is nice to be able to clamp things in place and you can adjust that as well actually this one will actually spin and you can also tilt it one side to the other base is not as big it's not as heavier machine but if you're buying new today you don't have a don't have options like you did on the old stuff come down here and we'll talk a little bit more about the the the joiners in terms of why I like to buy this particular brand so this was generals number 780 this is a 12 inch jointer big heavy tables these things weigh a ton actually they're not quite a ton the one behind me is 1600 this one has to probably come in at about 12 or 1300 but when you turn them on they just they don't move they're solid there's lots of adjustment and I'll end with this the more adjustments you have the more expensive the machines going to be if you were to look up underneath here there are for this table sits on four ramps and you can actually you can turn that you can twist that table to suit or to clean or to make it make it as flat as possible there's adjustments where you can move you can move that table back or forward to close this gap you can as I said you can raise it you can pull up one corner or the other there's just a ton of adjustment in there and I don't can't think of any machine today that has those kind of features built into it and the same outfeed table as it is for the infeed table so you can get these two tables in perfect alignment in terms of both paying parallel to one another it's got a nice big a nice big hand wheel for raising and lowering it and that big wheel like that just gives you lots of leverage so even though it's a big heavy table it's not hard to do I love that look how beefy this dispenses so you loosen this and then turn that out and it's just a thing weighs a ton but it's so nice and rock-solid this fence can also be tilted 45 degrees back that way get it where you want it lock it in place by the way technically you're only ever your joining of the edge of a board far off and then you're joining the face of a board so don't stay in one spot move your fence around so that you're not where you're not to dulling the blades in that one area which the heaviest use well listen if you have any questions about machines I'd love to share what I know I've gone through in fact if you look back here I'm forever buying this stuff and going through and restoring it I just find that it's fun oh we didn't oh yeah sorry let's go over the bandsaw save the best for last so here's what I have for examples this is a Rockwell delta which is a 20 inch machine probably somewhere in the 1970s this is a portrait and I may be butchering the name but this was a company out of Quebec Canada as well that company was purchased by General and how many years ago and they absorbed some of their designs and others had just faded away and then this is the general 15-inch which was a very popular bandsaw but also very expensive bandsaw I think these were somewhere around six thousand dollars when they were available which is a ton of money when you could you can buy an offshore model today for probably fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars but there's some features about that that are just second to none so let's just have a quick look it's got a couple of these this Rockwell which doesn't get used as much as I would like but because every flat surface in this shop always ends up being a spot to lay something it has a break so if you want to shut the Machine down quickly you can just apply the break and it stops it that's a feature you're only gonna find on better machines now the only downside to this which I was a little bit disappointed after I bought this I bought it at an auction is it actually has cast aluminum wheels I much prefer the cast iron that extra weight just plays in your favor has has tension adjust all machines are going to have a tension adjust some people say you should loosen it I never bothered to and then there's also the tracking the tracking it works on the top wheel and it moves the wheel on an axis like this so that you can get your blade to run top dead center on your on your wheel and then your guides well I've got three different examples for guides this these are two blocks of steel now I'm going to replace these with what are called cool blocks they're some kind of a composite they run a little cooler and the nice thing about them is you can bring them right up to make contact with your blade you don't want the blade to move when you're going around a turn you want the blade to stay fixed you don't want it to swing side-to-side so that's a nice feature with that style I'm going to improve it though and go with the composites and if you look at this point drive this has bearings so there's a thrust bearing right here the one in the back so as when you set it up you don't want the blade to actually be touching this it just barely clears it but as you start to use it and that pushes against this wheel that will spin to prevent the blade from going back and then there's two bearings on either side and they act to help stabilize the blade so it doesn't turn too much not bad only problem I see if time I find this would be a problem if you're cutting a really resinous wood like pine it Gunks up on the side and it gets squeezed in there with the bearings in a bit of a mess this is a nice machine if you look around here however it's all open this is the way it came there is no back on it what's really nice is you see all these weights they're on both sides so each one of these weights has a little set screw in there so you and you can go in there and perfectly balance that wheel top and bottom nice big work table everything is a really heavy-duty adjustment great machine now this is probably more applicable for the audience that are watching this this is a lot of cast iron the base actually that's I just slide this is an enormous tamp steel but it's heavier than most the cast iron is going to be in the frame so if you open the doors I might even clean this out now this section this back section is all cast iron so it's nice and rigid a lot of tension on that from the belt and from the buff and the the blade this is a cast iron wheel top and bottom and that wheels have what are called a rubber tire on there so that's a rubber tire so that your blade isn't running on steel and it's slightly crowned so that when this runs and it cracks the blade will stay on the top dead center of the wheel that's important you don't want that wondering popping off on you this one does not have a break the desk collecting on the air could be better than it is I actually go and watch one of my videos I made a an attachment that makes a much better dust collecting system but this was a simple machine but it was a well-built machine this has bearings on both sides face differently than the Poitras so you're gonna squeeze your blade between these two bearings if you actually touch it it gets kind of noisy you want it to just clear it may be a little bit less than the thickness of a piece of paper in between each one but again that's there so that when you're making a turn a curve and your blade is a tendency to want to twist this will prevent that from occurring and then you've got the bearing and the thrust bearing on the backside same bearings are found underneath as well and you try to have them as close to the top as possible so that the area that's being exposed the closer these are to the workpiece the better and the more stiffer it's gonna keep that blade so you always want to have cutting a piece of stock like that you're gonna want to bring this down so that it just clears it then lock it in place and there's some nice adjustments on here too you just loosen that thumb screw and you can dial that in to get this close you need there is your tension up here and there's your you're tracking back here which always has a lock screw end as well so when you get in position and some people a little nervous in doing this so what I do is I just spin it by hand and then you can go in here and you can track it and when you get it where you want it lock it turn the machine on just eyeball it to make sure it's running properly and where you go good machine good machine and a good size for a small home shop 15 inch and so in closing if you look around I've got we just recently bought this 16 inch jointer had an opportunity to buy it and had the 12 inch figure drew mezzo get the 16 will sell to 12 we just bought General makes a great lathe we've got these two we're gonna keep and these will be up and running all the time so somebody's working on that laid that one's available we're gonna sell this one this is a lighter version of the general painted gray but it's actually should be green this is another one of the two sixties which is the big one will sell this one I just bought a I just bought an old Delta shaper I'm gonna turn it into a router table for doing our handles we've got that table saw back there we've got another table saw back there made by a company called Watkyn over in England which is a great machine but again how can you beat a saw stop in behind that is a combination six inch jointer twelve inch thickness planer made by Makita which only downside is it runs on a real high rpm motor so it's loud but it's a great portable piece of equipment if you were if you had a small shop or if you're going to take something to your job site and that's in the very back corner is another 14 inch beaver old-style Beeville beaver Delta army beaver bandsaw nice old machine probably built in the 50s when we restore it it'll run beautifully anyway so that's it any questions you're always welcome to forward your comments to us go to our website Rob cosmic comm there's a place in there you can ask questions we'll do our best to answer them and if it's a really good question we'll make a do two video edit youtube video out of it hope you enjoyed this

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 95,807

Rating: 4.8952761 out of 5

Keywords: power tools, band saw, table saw, drill press, jointer, rob cosman, woodworking, wood

Id: VuMjdAlIuTE

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020