Woodworker Friend

[Dennis Weaver]

In the 90s my apartment was two doors down from "South Jersey Woodworking," a cabinet shop. Yea that worked!

Anyhow now I find myself with a 10" table saw that doesn't want to cut 90 degree cuts and the fence would be the second issue. Yea a 99 buck table saw was OK when new for making a back porch, but now!!!

I do not have a drill press but just got the old Irving Sloane book where he says you can use a brace drill to do soundboard holes and rosette channels with a fly cutter! Cool with me I am getting a brace.

ANYHOW.... bACK TO THE STORY

I built , well still have to finish one, 2 guitars recently and I would call all my guitar playing friends up and say "Come on over and see the guitar in progress." NONE came over! I also called my woodworker friend (Oh BTW I stink at woodworking and am learning that as I go cause I like guitar making) and he was over in a half hour and was INTERESTED! He liked the cam clamps and asked many questions.

Anyhow, he has good tools like table saws, joiners (He wanted to give me a joiner and some other stuff) and a saw mill from Harbor Freight Tools. He is into getting local trees people are cutting down and sawing them up into planks and stickering them in the garage. He also just bought a planer.

Yea I am seeing a vision of what will happen. I got a pile of wood I want to turn into some necks and if he has a joiner and a good table saw etc...
Maybe I can do a Since you helped me, here is a guitar made for you, or help with guitar.

Anyhow seems like woodworkers and guitar makers get along, go figure right. Now I got to be more of the other.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Dennis,
Rather than buying a brace you might want to consider buying a small laminate router. With simple homemade jigs you can do soundhole cut outs, rosette channels, binding rabbets and many other guitarmaking tasks.

[Dennis Weaver]

I have two of them. A Harbor Freight cheap laminate trimmer and now I just got a Bosch Colt small router. Yea, I should get a piece of scrap wood and learn how to make circle rebates with a template and pin. It would save me the chiseling work.

[Daryl Kosinski]

Most table saws even cheap ones can be "tuned". It took several hours the first time, but I have my blade within 0.0005 inch referenced to the miter slot and 0.001 to the rip fence. Even new out of the box a lot of table saws could use a "tuning".

[Patrick Hanna]

I'll second what Daryl said. Lots of tools, including table saws, can be tuned up and adjusted to work a lot better. Of course, you've got to have a clear notion of what you're doing, but there is good information available on getting the most out of your table saw. My table saw belonged to my dad. It was never a junk saw, but it wasn't a professional cabinet shop saw, either--just a nice, small saw. I understand its limitations. It's now about 60 years old. At various times, I've re-aligned the table to the track of the blade, I've put new bearings in the arbor, I've removed backlash from the tilt and height screws and I've had new bearings put in the motor. I put a new, well-balanced drive pulley on the motor and added a fiber link drive belt. I've made all kinds of supplemental fence attachments, cross cut sleds, etc. I've made extension wings to widen the table. I'd still like to add a small outfeed table, but I do have an outfeed roller.
And, of course, I make sure that my blades are sharp and NOT warped. I get some very good precision and repeatability out of this saw but I never ask it to do a job that's too big for it. On those rare times when I need more depth of cut or whatever, I can usually rely on a very generous friend of mine to help me out. I expect my saw to last me the rest of my life.