Marc - Welcome my friends to the first official shop talk.
Now this is kinda breaking from the format
of what we usually do with our project videos.
It's going to be a short, quick, to the point
answer to someone's email.
Cause I get a lot of questions via email,
and it's nice to put it in a format
that's useful for everybody,
and can be found in the future
if you need that information.
I'd also like to use it as an opportunity
to tell you what's going on in the shop,
if there's anything I need to update you on
community stuff like that.
Alright, so, let's get right into it.
First things first, I got a couple stickers.
A big thank you to everybody
who sends these stickers in, these are awesome.
And VanceMaker, by the way, dude's five years old.
Check him out.
So, what's been going on in my life?
Well, two months ago, Nicole gave birth
two our second child, Ava Elizabeth Spagnolo.
She's doing great, she was born early
just like her brother.
And we did the whole NICU preemie thing,
which is never really all that fun
but all we can ask for is a healthy baby,
and that's what we have.
So, she's doing great.
Mom's doing great and life is good.
The other thing is, I just finished up my
gaming dining table.
Now, that's a gild project
and you can buy the plans if you want to.
But I'm also gonna make a free video,
because I'm getting a lot of inquiries about it,
people wanna see it go together
and I can certainly do one of those fast videos.
I hate doing teaser content, that's not my thing.
But enough people have asked about it
that I'm gonna try to do something
that's a good compromise so you can see it go together.
Cause it's kind of an awesome table.
Now, a big thank you goes out to my buddy
Shaun Rubino over at SpunjinWorks.com.
He sent me this wonderful artpiece.
This is a gilding and patination project,
which you can kind of do on a flat panel
and then incorporate into something else.
And I think Shaun is just getting some practice here,
doing his best David Marks impression.
This is fantastic work, it looks beautiful, Shaun.
And it will adorn the shop wall forever.
Right now, let's check our mail bank.
Checkin' dah email.
Skip wrote in and asked,
my 25 year old son and I did
a couple of projects together,
and now we're hooked.
We want to start by purchasing a table saw,
we went to the local Rockler store,
and we're pretty set on buying a Jet.
The guy that helped us suggested a Saw Stop.
I know you use Powermatic.
Could I impose upon you for a suggestion?
Yes, Skip.
Yes you may.
Now, he mentioned a couple different brands
but let's talk about Saw Stop first.
When it comes to Saw Stop, if you want that safety feature,
boom, you're done.
Save up, buy that saw.
Because there's no other saw on the market
right now that has that safety feature.
Now if you're not sure you want it,
or if you don't wanna pay the extra amount for it,
you then open up the play book.
There's a lot of different brands that you should consider.
Now, I recommended the PM 1,000.
I think it's one of the best saws out there for the price.
It's got sort of that cabinet saw style and feature set,
but runs on 110, so the average shop
will be able to handle that kind of power requirement.
There are other saws on the market,
but that's one that I'm familiar with
and that's what I recommended to Skip.
So, here's what he wrote back.
I did listen to your advice
and then did something different.
Rockler was out of Saw Stops
and they never stock Powermatic.
Going with their cousin Jet, we were able to get the saw,
jointer and a thickness planer.
Since we're starting from nothing,
we just need to get going.
You know, I love that. And it's such a great point.
Because, Skip had a big choice to make.
Do I spend, you know, the whole last tool first?
Which is good advice in some cases,
but in this case, it may have prevented him
from getting some other tools that he needed
to really get going and starting to do his woodworking.
So, I think in a lot of cases,
you can easily justify going with less expensive tools,
for the sake of getting a full shop.
This way, you get some practice under your belt.
You learn more about what each tool does,
and maybe later on down the line,
sell those tools and upgrade to something else
when you understand why it might be necessary
to upgrade to something else.
Now let's head over to my table saw
and I'll give you some advice on what to look for
and what things you can ignore
if you're in the market for a new saw.
What I've got here is a Powermatic PM 2,000
with a custom paint job.
Years ago there was a service that came along
that would do this custom work
to Powermatic table saws.
It was really cool, and somewhat shortlived
because people couldn't justify the extra cost,
but I was lucky enough to get ahold of one.
So, that's what I'm running here.
It's got a five horsepower motor.
Way overkill for what most people need in the shop.
I ordered it with a three, they accidentally sent a five
and it was too much trouble to replace it.
And so, I've got a five horsepower.
Basically, simple 10 inch cabinet saw.
Very reliable fence system,
in fact I did upgrade to the very super cool
tools fence system here.
Some aluminum extrusion, dead straight.
Works really good for my purposes.
Up top, I'm running an after market guard system.
It's called the Brett-Guard from HTC.
I don't even know if they make it anymore.
But you can see it's nice cause
it kind of tilts out of the way when you don't need it,
and it drops back down when you do.
So, what do you look for in a good table saw?
First you need a reasonably flat table.
Now, it doesn't have to be dead flat.
And it really only needs to be flat
in the area around the blade.
So don't stress out about it too much,
but if it's way out of whack,
you may want to skip on that particular one.
You wanna make sure that the saw
takes zero clearance inserts.
Either ones that you buy aftermarket,
or ones you make yourself.
Because the ones that come with the saws
generally have too wide of a gap here.
You really wanna close that up.
Zero clearance inserts are a must.
You definitely wanna have some sort of splitter in place.
Now, a splitter is good,
but a riving knife is better
because it travels up and down
with the height of the blade
so you can use it in more situations.
And we don't have to have one of those
big clunky guards around it.
So you can use this with an overhead guard of some sort.
And you can remove it when you need to,
and easily put it back in place
for the safest cuts possible.
You need a good, reliable fence.
Something that when you lock it down,
it doesn't move it's position
and back here there's really no flex.
And the fence itself should be nice and straight.
Also take a look at the miter slot.
This is more of a standard miter slot
and if you buy anything aftermarket,
chances are you're going to have
no trouble finding accessories that fit this.
There are some saws that have either
proprietary, or sort of odd ball slots
that make it difficult to make sleds,
and things like that for your table saw.
And one of the most useful things I have in the shop
is a dado stack.
So you want to make sure that the arbor is long enough
to take a nice stack of blades like this.
Of course, this may vary in different countries.
Now, those are the things that I feel
are most important.
But there are also some things
that you can ignore.
The first thing is the blade guard.
Not because you don't need one,
but because there are so many great
aftermarket solutions, that work better than
the kinda crappy stuff that comes
with these tables saws, a lot of times.
So, if it doesn't have a great blade guard on it,
that's ok.
You can always add a better one later.
Don't stress out too much about the leaves.
You could have stamped steel, or aluminum.
Something on the outside,
because the primary working area,
and the reference area of a table saw
if right here, around the blade.
That needs to be good, flat cast iron.
Everything else can be, just supportive.
It doesn't have to be in perfect line
with the table saw top.
So, that's a secondary concern.
And finally, don't worry about the blade.
Most stocked blades are kinda crappy.
So, you'll be upgrading that eventually.
And that alone will improve the cut quality
on your saw more than anything else.
Well, thanks for that question, Skip.
And I hope everyone else enjoyed hearing my answer.
Remember, it's just my opinions.
So if you feel differently about it,
let me know in the comments.
Maybe you can help Skip out with a future tool purchase.
And if you want to leave a question,
that might be read on the show,
go to thewoodwhipserer.com/contact
or just leave a question
in the comment section
Twitter,
Facebook, whatever.
I'm going to grab these questions
from just about everywhere.
Alright, thanks for watching everybody.
And I'll catch you next time.