thoughts on a contractor saw

Questions about tools and jigs you want to buy/build/modify.
John Sonksen
Posts: 356
Joined: Sun May 20, 2012 12:16 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: thoughts on a contractor saw

Post by John Sonksen »

Bob Hammond wrote:Nice. When the budget permits, I'll upgrade. I wonder if they'll come up with a retrofit for existing popular saws.

Because of worker safety-liability issues, eventually I think all commercial shops will buy these and retire their Unisaws & 66s. In the future I think you'll see many of these used saws available at reasonable cost in good condition.
last I heard they were not offering retrofit kits for other saws, instead they developed their own line of saws. I believe Sawstop was pursuing a mandate in California that all saws sold there needed to be equipped with their safety equipment, but because it was only available from their product it was turned down for obvious reasons.

Very nice purchase Chuck, I am definitely jealous. My saw went to a machine shop Friday afternoon to get the bearings swapped hence no pictures. I'm cleaning up some of the other parts and should get the main chassis back Monday. I'll post some pics as I put it all back together. This is turning out to be a lot more work than I wanted to do but I know I'm going to be happy with the saw when it's all said and done.
John Sonksen
Posts: 356
Joined: Sun May 20, 2012 12:16 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: thoughts on a contractor saw

Post by John Sonksen »

I've been so busy I totally forgot about this thread, snapped some pics today so I thought I'd update. I had a lot of cleaning to do, pretty much took the whole thing apart, cleaned up all of the old grease and a bit of surface corrosion. I swapped out both arbor bearings on it and it's running pretty smooth now but I might actually modify the base a little bit, thinking of shortening the belt and getting the motor a little closer as well as putting it on a nicer mount. I found a mortising table on ebay for it, with the tenoning jig so I'm just a chuck away from having a nice setup for furniture joinery. So here are some pics:
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Bob Hammond
Posts: 638
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 4:13 pm

Re: thoughts on a contractor saw

Post by Bob Hammond »

A pair of machined pulleys and Powertwist link belt might smooth it out a bit more.
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