And no Ruptured Disks

Just when you thought I could not possibly be more impressed with myself, I prove you wrong. Today I finished my amazing table saw/router table project. And it WORKS!

I nearly killed myself doing this. I kept running into things I didn’t anticipate. For example, tee nuts don’t stick to softwood end grain very well, which makes your shiny new casters fall out of the legs of your table saw extension, causing it to fall on the floor while you’re trying to screw it to the rails. But the resulting table is very good. It looks hideous because I used that old computer desk for the top, but the fence slides over the joint just fine.

I think the moment of greatest joy was when I grabbed my router and lift, which had been sitting on top of a case of Gatorade, and put them back in the table. Now I have 91 1/2 inches of woodworking room.

I got some Stanley plastic sawhorses. Criticize me for not making my own if you want; there is no way they would have compared to these. You can adjust the height in one-inch increments, and each one has a platform between the legs where you can put tools. And you can stand on the platform. I did it in the store. When you’re done, they fold up in a small space.

I picked up some little Irwin clamps. They’re wonderful. They have pistol grips, and you can tighten them by squeezing. They exert surprising pressure, and they don’t mar your work. As soon as I got them out of the package, I found I couldn’t do without them. Right now you can get a package of four for twenty bucks. That’s a bargain.

My little 10″ miter saw (sitting on Og’s favorite tool, the Workmate) came into play over and over. That thing is a jewel. It’s precise. It’s fast. It’s easy to use. I’m going to miss it when I get the big sliding saw set up. I cut the struts that support the extension legs with that saw, and then I clamped them in place with the little clamps, drilled holes with my cordless Bosch, and used my impact driver to drive the 3″ screws home. If that tool was a woman, I’d marry it.

The extension has two-by-three legs supported in both directions by struts angled at 45 degrees. There are two big casters with brakes on the end, but the table saw is so heavy, that end barely touches the ground. The casters are threaded, and I put jam nuts on the threads so I can adjust them for floor problems. The only other thing I might do would be to screw a power strip to the extension so I can plug the router into it and keep the cord from dragging.

Man, I feel like I accomplished something. The garage seems huge now, and I have some really nice tools arranged for convenience. And these days, I can actually do things with them. I’m no Norm Abrams, but this extension is surprisingly nice. And it somehow worked out so that when I get sick of the computer desk top, I can remove and replace it pretty easily. Provide I can come up with something else exactly 1 1/4″ thick.

I have to shower the sawdust out of my hair and ears now. And it’s past my bedtime. But it was worth it.