The Nimitz is Moored in my Garage
December 25th, 2008TLC
While I wait to toss the rib roast in the oven, I have been fooling with the new old table saw. I wanted to get the blade and top aligned, and I thought I’d to a few other things.
When I took the top off this thing to move it, six shims fell out of the front side. They were between the cabinet and the top. I was not positive, but by the way they fell, it seemed likely that there had been three on each side. A commenter told me I was in danger of warping the top if I got the shims wrong.
I now think that has to be wrong. This top attaches at three points. It’s impossible for three points to define anything except a perfectly flat plane. So it should be impossible for the three mounting points to exert a flexing force on the top. It seems to me that the only important thing the shims can do is to prevent the top from sloping diagonally.
I got some advice on orienting the blade inside the throat plate slot, and I found out how to align the blade with the miter slots, and I took a crack at it. Now the table is tightened down, and everything looks kosher. I’m not one hundred percent certain about the squareness of the blade to the top, but it seems fine when measured with the tools I now have.
A woodworker told be about a couple of great tools for tuning table saws. One is a dial indicator which reads in tiny fractions of an inch when you depress its plunger. The other is a Chinese dial caliper. You’re supposed to mount the indicator on a cross made from scrap, put one part of the cross in the miter slot, and move it back and forth while checking the distance. You pick a tooth on the blade and use it as your reference. I haven’t been able to do that yet, but I was able to measure the distance between the near wall of the slot and one gap on the saw, and it looks fine.
I put stuff on the saw’s cord to polish it up, and I used orange-based gun cleaner on the top, to see if it did anything. It made the saw smell very nice, but no matter how much of the ancient varnish I remove, there is always more underneath. My only real concern is that it will stain wood that rests on it. And it might cause friction.
I wish my new plug were here so I could fire the saw up and make sure everything was right. Kelly Mehler has a blade-aligning trick that only requires a dowel and a miter gauge. I could do that if the saw were running.
The more I think about the extra-long rails, the more I think I might be able to make use of them. If I moved a cabinet in the garage, I would have room for the rails, and the cord would still reach my socket. I could put a big ol’ extension on the table and hang a router from it. I could put wheels on the whole operation. I could make a cabinet under the extension, with an enclosed dust-catching area for the router, plus a shelf or some drawers. If I did all that, I would have endless horizontal space to work with. I will never need it for stuff I’m cutting on the table saw, but it would be convenient to put tools and workpieces on it while I’m doing things.
The extension should be easy to make. A flat board with two legs and some bracing. A hole for a router. Casters. Done. Not sure how to compensate for the uneven garage floor, however.
It would be hilarious to use my old desk as the extension. It’s probably too narrow, though.
I’m wondering what other junk I need to do basic woodwork. Planer and jointer, I suppose. Surely that will be enough. Maybe it’s possible to survive without a jointer, if I get my wood squared up when I buy it. I think a planer would be harder to do without, because you wouldn’t want to have to drive five miles each way when you change your mind about the thickness you want.
This stuff is a tremendous amount of fun, regardless of whether I accomplish anything in the end.
December 25th, 2008 at 2:28 PM
May the next year inspire new tool discoveries and more healing of your soul.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Steve.
December 25th, 2008 at 3:02 PM
merry Christmas! Hope this is the begining of things to come.
If you email me a P.O box I’ll make you a saw gauge that you can use to check the squareness of your blade- AND your fence.
December 25th, 2008 at 4:07 PM
I use cheap plastic drawing triangles (45/90 and 30/60/90) or a machinists square or a bevel protractor (get a combo kit) to square my blade to the table or set its angle. Same for my miter gauge. They’re good tools to have around and inexpensive. Sliding two of the triangles on their hypotenuse gives you a good square to align your blade to the fence. Rolling your fence to alongside the blade is a good start.
Of course, I’m cheap…
Merry Christmas to all.
December 25th, 2008 at 9:31 PM
Merry Christmas to you!
December 25th, 2008 at 10:54 PM
Yes, you’ll eventually want a planer, but a router IS a jointer — just one with the guides, etc. removed for freehand use. If you have it built into a table with a good fence, you only need the proper set of bits. Cylindrical ones give you square edges, and there are cutters for lap joints, tongue-and-groove, and the like. The only problem is that there is a maximum board thickness it can manage, where a real jointer is less limited in that respect.
A good dial indicator is a joy and a treasure in any shop. For aligning the saw, you could use a piece of metal that’s a sliding fit in the miter-gauge slots. Drill a hole in it to accommodate the support for the dial indicator, and you can use that to align the blade and fence. What I did was to drill and tap a hole in the miter gauge bar itself — it doesn’t hurt it, and made an easy place to attach the indicator. For vertical alignment, take the ruler out of a good-quality try-square and use that for a reference.
Glad to hear the top of your saw only attaches with three bolts. Mine (an old, relatively cheap Craftsman) has six, and the top is permanently warped because I didn’t know what I was doing when I put it back together after moving it. That’s why I offered a warning. I only use my saw for relatively crude stuff, so it doesn’t matter much, and after a couple of painful incidents I now know how to stand around it to avoid being hurt when it kicks back. If I could afford better I’d go for it.
Regards,
Ric
December 25th, 2008 at 11:25 PM
I don’t see any practical way to put two flat, smooth, perpendicular faces on a board with a router, barring a pretty bizarre set of jigs. Give me a one-by-six board, and I can put two good edges on it, but creating a flat, smooth face perpendicular to those edges is not so simple. I have directions for making a jig, but it’s not all that practical.
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The idea of putting the dial indicator on the miter gauge makes a lot of sense for me, because my router gauges are going to have to be replaced. Drilling holes in them won’t hurt anything.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:13 PM
But a jointer doesn’t make flat faces, Steve; that’s the planer’s job. A jointer makes square, smooth edges, or sometimes more complex shapes, so that the boards can be joined using glue or other techniques. Hence the name, eh? All of which can be done with a router, up to some maximum thickness of board that’s less than what a dedicated joiner can accommodate.
You can face a board with a router, but as you say it requires a complex setup and a lot of tedious passes, rather like trying to make a large flat face with a milling machine, and you don’t have the near-absolute rigidity and alignment of something like a Bridgeport, so you end up doing a lot of sanding afterward.
Regards,
Ric
December 26th, 2008 at 12:22 PM
How come the Taunton.com article on planers and jointers says this: “The jointer has two jobs: It mills a single face of a board flat and straight, and it can square one edge to that face.”?
December 26th, 2008 at 2:46 PM
A jointer blade is wider than a router bit. If the board is narrower than the blade, the jointer will plane it. That doesn’t make it a general purpose planer.
Regards,
Ric
December 26th, 2008 at 3:06 PM
The jointer can actually square all four sides, but cannot make them parallel. Use your table saw to make on edge parallel to the opposite side you ran through the jointer.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:35 PM
“The extension should be easy to make. A flat board with two legs and some bracing. A hole for a router. Casters. Done. Not sure how to compensate for the uneven garage floor, however.”
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Most Garage floors slope towards the door (to aid in run-off) but are level side-to-side. I’m not sure about your floor, but if your always using the extension in the same orientation to the floor, then you could use a locking caster that has a threaded base (for leveling purposes):
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http://www.mcmaster.com/itm/find.ASP?tab=find&context=psrchDtlLink&fasttrack=False&searchstring=2834T45
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If you make your legs from wood, maybe you can use a threaded “hammer-in” wood nut:
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http://www.mcmaster.com/itm/find.ASP?tab=find&context=psrchDtlLink&fasttrack=False&searchstring=90975A033
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If steel legs, maybe a weld nut?
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http://www.mcmaster.com/itm/find.ASP?tab=find&context=psrchDtlLink&fasttrack=False&searchstring=90596A033
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I’d love to have a setup like your saw…Barb wants to redo the kitchen eventually and a saw like yours would pay for itself in the first few cabinets I made. I just don’t have the room at the moment 🙁
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Oh well, plane first, kitchen later (Barb likes to fly so she’ll agree with that priority 🙂 )
December 26th, 2008 at 7:01 PM
Ric,
Actually, a jointer is used to flatten a board before thickness planing. A warped & twisted board, run through a thickness planer comes out warped and twisted, just thinner. That’s why they make wide jointers, my wife’s is 16″ (vintage 1900).
This is not quite so important for Steve, perhaps, if he buys “factory” lumber to begin with, as it should be flat. If he decides to start with rough-cut lumber from a sawmill, it will almost certainly have to be flattened on a jointer before planing to thickness. Although it requires another operation, lumber from a sawmill is MUCH cheaper than from, say WoodCrafters. It pains me to look at boards at W.C. with price tags of $5.00/bf and more for plain ol’ oak or cherry.
When Steve’s shop is complete, it’ll no doubt include a decent jointer.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:42 AM
I’d go with the jointer first for doing glue joints. You can taper and other cool soft too.
Often wood suppliers in the Dallas area at least will plane for you. You might want to consider a thickness sander instead of a planer as it can often handle cleaning up panels.
December 30th, 2008 at 12:46 AM
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