Table Saw Build

 

Sometime in August of 2017 I purchased my first table saw and was immediately glad I'd bought one for a project I was working on Deacon's Bench Toybox.

I didn't really know what I was doing or what I would really need long term, so I made a quick impulse buy. I ran to the local box store and purchased the least expensive table saw which worked out great until I realized I wanted a much bigger footprint for a table surface. The saw I purchased has a 23 x 17 table surface. Once I started wanting to build sleds for the table saw the surface was just too small.

I looked around to see what I wanted, but the saws I wanted were all very expensive (of course!)

I also came across youtube woodworking channels and have become fascinated with things people have done. And people have made their own table saws. In my case I think I just want to take apart the saw I bought and put it into a bigger footprint.

My plans are to build (or repurpose) my saw such that it has a 36x48 surface with a built in router lift and built in dust collection (another big reason for wanting to build my own).

I opened up Sketch up and came up with something that looks about like this as what I'm aiming build!

This is what I'm starting with, hoping to successfully take apart and mount into a bigger "table"!    

I've started by making a trip to the local store and picked up some wood to start my build.

I've got:

• (10) 2x4s
• (1) 4x8 sheet of 3/4 MDF
• (1) 4x8 sheet of 1/2 birch ply wood

 

To make the legs I cut down 2x4s to 32 inches and started gluing them up.

I made 12 lengths of board as I planned to have 3 pieces form up each leg for stability.

Shaped the legs a little to have them go together with the framing to be a little more solid.

A couple pictures of the base of the table saw.  Its all starting to come together now.

Now that I have the base done, and the top roughly cut to size; I have the donor table saw on the left that is going to be "guts" that go into the contraption I'm building on the right.

Here's the donor saw motor sitting under the sheet of MDF that is the new saw's top.

Here's a shot of the saw motor going into a box under the new table saw top.

The front of the motor box is coming together.

Here's a shot of the router lift that also got mounted into the big table saw project.

The fence getting put together on the new table saw, of course.

Here's a shot from the side where you can see the router bit sticking up and the table saw blade sticking up as well, both in front of the homemade fence.

A new table saw requires a new table saw sled right?  (Even if it doesn't require one, I made one just in case anyway).

And a final couple of shots of the table saw.

I've built a fence that John Heinz sells on ibuildit.ca, however, I didn't use a good quality of plywood and I probably wasn't careful in my construction so I need to "fix" it or "rebuild" it. Either way I need to do that.

I've built a table saw sled and a miter sled for the new table saw and they work great.