Power saws

Good power saws are an important part of what, for me, makes it possible to enjoy weekend woodworking. They provide fast, accurate, clean cuts that require minimal follow-up work.

Benchtop table saw. My first benchtop table saw was a cheap one. It always scared me half to death as I never felt totally in control when I was using it. Eventually I upgraded to a Dewalt DW744 10″. At the time, it was among the best in its class, and I thought it was the most innovative with its extending fence that enabled handling of 4′ wide sheets of plywood. A variant of this saw, the DW744X is still available today (Jan 2010).

The only thing I didn't like about this saw was the blade guard/splitter that came with it, which—as was typical of portable table saws on the market at that time—was so clumsy and constraining that, like many woodworkers, I ended up just taking it off and leaving it off. Of course, that's a very bad move, but then I made a custom rolling stand for the saw, which included an HTC Brett Guard mounted on the left wing, giving me a much safer saw.

Then, in the autumn of 2009, we had a fire in the attic of our garage, half of which is my shop, due to some faulty electrical wiring that was done before we purchased our home and finally gave out. Fortunately, we discovered the fire very early and an incredible response by our fire department kept it from doing major damage, though they did need to tear down a big section of the corrugated steel sheet ceiling to get at the fire. This is what it looked like the next day … after a couple hours of cleaning. (To complete this picture, you have to imagine the overpoweringly angry smell of charred wood in the air.)

The fire not only threatened my workshop and the tools it contains, but since our garage is attached, it also threatened our home. Needless to say, the experience was quite traumatic and left me in a hypersensitive state about everything electrical. For a few days I couldn't even turn on our toaster oven without getting a nervous feeling that the outlet was going to burst into flames.

I hired an electrician to rewire the garage, and I had him run several new, separate, heavy-duty circuits to the locations where I plug in my shop tools. Still I remained nervous, and one thing that made me uncomfortable was the way my old table saw jolted the electrical circuit on startup. It was the only bigger tool in my shop that didn't have a soft-start motor, and I decided to get a new soft-start table saw just to calm myself down.

Looking back, I suppose this was an overreaction, but it didn't seem like it at the time. The upside is that when I looked around at the current batch of benchtop saws, I found the Bosch 4100.

The 4100 is an impressive saw. It has a good rip fence (I opted for the mechanical fence, but an electronic version is also available), a smooth, soft-starting 15-amp motor, a larger and innovative table top that splits and widens to accommodate things like full sheets of plywood, and a wonderful blade guard/splitter called the Smart Guard System. Yep, you heard right, I just described the blade guard/splitter system that comes with the saw as "wonderful"! It really works well, so well that I'm not using the Brett Guard anymore. The Smart Guard System is explained in this video on the BoschTools.com site.

(By the way, the newer Dewalt DW744X also has a soft-start motor and a better guard—the basic new guard system was recently co-developed by several manufacturers including Bosch and Dewalt—but overall the Bosch 4100 seems to me to be a better saw.)

The Bosch came with the rugged and clever Gravity-Rise wheeled stand (also fits other brands of benchtop saws), which I'll hang onto for when I do outside work. With the saw mounted, the stand easily unfolds (the "gravity-rise" bit) and just as easily re-folds to allow for mobility and compact storage of the saw. It works really well and is quite stable.

For my purposes, though, the stand I built for the Dewalt is still better because it makes it easier for me to stabilize longer lengths as I feed them through for ripping, and fortunately I was able to fit the new saw to the stand with just a few adjustments to accommodate the larger and slightly higher table top. One good thing about this stand is that the trio of maple push sticks I made are right there in a tray I built in just in front of the saw (one for regular sized wood, one for thin wood, and one with a replaceable ¼″ push blade for cuts close to the fence). Since they're always conveniently available, I'm never tempted to take a shortcut and not use them.

The nice conclusion to the story of this saw is that I purchased it because of the fire, then used it for the repair work of the damage caused by the fire. It took a few months to get things back to normal, better than normal actually: our garage/workshop is now a nicer space with better lighting, wiring, and ventilation. Making it better than it was helped make the many weekends I spent working on it feel more worthwhile. And yes, it's reassuring to be able to start my table saw without worrying about whether the startup kick is going to stress the new circuit it's on, whether or not being concerned about that was foolish paranoia.

Blades and sharpening. I found a source of high quality carbide table and miter saw blades as well as an excellent mail-in sharpening service at Ridge Carbide Tool.

Sliding compound miter saw. I didn't know what I was missing before I added a miter saw to my shop; it makes it so much easier and faster to create things. I'm able to do precise, clean cross, miter, and bevel cuts in moments.

For several years I had a Bosch 3915 (PDF), which I really enjoyed until it recently surprised me by suddenly dying. The reviews of the current generation (early 2010) of sliding compound miter saws have the Bosch 4410 and the Makita LS1016 (PDF) at the front of the pack.

The Bosch usually gets the tip, but several factors led me to choose the Makita. I liked that the Makita is gear drive rather than belt drive, and I was influenced by my recent experience with a couple other Makita tools that have impressed me for their quality (the 5007MGA 7¼″ Magnesium Circular Saw, and the cordless Lithium-Ion BHP454 18V LXT ½″ Hammer Driver-Drill). Finally, having used a Bosch for several years and having had it quit on me, I was simply curious to try a different brand.

However, if I were to do it over I'd try the Bosch 4410 instead. Let me explain why.

For the most part, the Makita appears to be a well-engineered tool. It's easier to lock in precise miter angles than my old saw (though the new Bosch has what looks like a very clever miter micro-adjustment mechanism, similar to what they have on some of their routers). It's also easier to set bevel angles. The saw's soft-start, bevel and spur gear-drive motor is angled to make it possible to bevel both left and right. It's very smooth and quiet, and electronically maintains speed under load, which makes cutting hard maple or oak a piece of cake. I really like the horizontal handle with the big trigger, and it has sliding upper and lower fences so you can keep it tight on miter cuts and move it out of the way for bevel cuts.

The saw arrived with one flaw, though, which appears to be a poor implementation of a clever design feature. It has lower and upper dual slide pipes, which enable it to be more compact yet still have an exceptionally long reach for a 10″ saw (it'll crosscut a 12″ board). The bottom pipes slide totally smoothly, but the linear bearings guiding the top pipes are very rough, so much so that it takes effort to push them all the way in, and this causes jitters, which really surprises and disappoints me. Users have reported in their reviews that that the upper slides improve over time, but come on Makita, it should be smooth out of the box.

The Makita fit the rolling stand I built for the original Bosch miter saw fairly well; all I had to do was raise the wings a bit (the wings make it easier to handle longer lengths and must be flush with the saw's table). Right below the saw, I built a sloped ramp into the stand so that most of the saw dust that escapes the bag tumbles down to the floor behind the saw. The stand itself provides storage for the sheets of thin wood I use for shoji lamps.

The reason the stand has so many bolts in it is that I initially didn't know how high the stand should be in order to put the saw at a comfortable height, so I built it in a way that allowed me to adjust the height. But the joke was on me: the first height I tried was great, so I never had to adjust it!

Circular saw. In early 2009 I replaced a Porter Cable Model 447. Over the years, the material painted on its cast aluminum shoe to make it slippery got softer and stickier until it wasn't easy to push the saw across wood anymore. Finally I sanded it off, but the exposed aluminum was sticky, too, so I decided to get a new saw.

I looked for a saw with an electric brake, a must-have safety feature for me. The Makita 5007MGA 7¼″ Magnesium saw stood out as the best fit for me. I paired it with a Freud D0740X Diablo 7¼″ 40 Tooth ATB Finishing Saw Blade. My first cut went well. My second cut was a more challenging angled cut through 2 feet of glued up 1½″ thick maple for an end table I'm making. When I finished that cut and looked at the results, and then repeated it several times, I knew I had a good saw and blade combination in my hands. But I haven't had this tool long enough to judge its durability.

Jig saw. Until you've used a jig saw like the Bosch 1587DVS 5 Amp, you can't imagine how much better it is than cheaper ones. The blade tracks very precisely, it's totally easy to change blades, and Bosch makes some great blades for this tool.

Band saw. I couldn't work without a good band saw. It enables me to cut the really unusual angles that run lengthwise along the sides of my lamp faces (the dihedral angles), as well as the very thin pieces that make up the kumiko (as delicate as ¼″ × ¼″). The Inca Model 340 10½″, which I've been using for many years, is a small, well-designed machine with a direct-drive ¾ HP motor.

The stand I built for this heavy tool is a sturdy, rolling, double-sided tool chest. (I talk about the drawers on the Odds & ends page.) It provides me with a large amount of storage, optimizing my small shop's space. This was the first rolling stand I built, inspired in part by how heavy the Inca is (I originally had it mounted just on the darker base you can see in the photo and carried it to my workbench whenever I needed to use it, which was a real back breaker!). I assembled the stand using a bunch of 3″ lag bolts that came out of our old and quite rotten deck when we tore it down to replace it. I love recycling old stuff into something useful!

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