This table saw came from a sponsor.
The company that this saw is from shall remain
unnamed in this video because I did do some sponsored videos
with them with some other tools, I was gonna do
a paid real for the saw, but when I looked at it,
I realized it was not gonna go well.
I've been agonizing over whether I should review this saw
or not because it's really not a nice thing to do to a company
that gives you a free saw and that's why
I won't name the company. Even before I got the saw
out of the box, I thought the insert out
and had a look in here.
And, I saw this part here and I'm going
"Hey, that doesn't look straight."
"That looks like it's a little bit bent."
And, then I looked down in the shroud and it's like
"Hey, there's a hole in the bottom of the dust shroud."
Well, that's kind of useless. Isn't the dust supposed to
go out the hole in the back? And, then it turned a blade
a little bit and I saw that it wobbles.
Now, I sent the original one back and they sent me
another one. This one is much better.
But, the way this arbor is made it's not prone to
terrible precision.
What keeps the blade flat and not wobbling
is the precision of this part. If this part
is a little bit crooked, then the blade ends up going
a little bit like this as it turns.
And, the problem with this is, this is,
I think it's actually a cast part.
And, it just sits straight up against the ball bearing here.
And, so any slight imperfection on here
will be multiplied by 20 times by the time you get out here.
So, if this is not completely flat,
that causes a blade wobble. This is a problem with
most job site saw in that this part actually
is loose from the arbor. On cabinet maker saws
and on hybrid table saws this part tends to be
bonded directly to the arbor. So that it doesn't have any play
even though this part was hard to push on,
once it's here, actually it does have a little bit of play.
I can rock it back and forth and the only thing that makes it
rigid is when it gets pushed up against the bearing
by the blade and the other flange.
The saw has a riving knife which you can
lower it a fair bit or raise it quite a ways up.
This is the first time I actually put the guard
on this saw it's not something I would normally use.
But the way the riving knife goes up and down is actually
quite nice, not everything about this saw is terrible.
But, for now let's get back to the things that are terrible
about this saw. So, this here has got
a hole in the bottom of it which totally defeats the idea
of hooking up a vacuum cleaner here.
But, when I looked in the box,
there was a piece of plastic in there and I realized
that was a cover that was meant to be out here
and you can see there's a screw with a bit of plastic that
just came off, so there was a cover that's meant to go
on here and it broke on both saws they sent me.
So, really that's nothing a piece of duct tape
wouldn't correct but you shouldn't have to do that
on a brand new saw. This piece of plastic
moves as the saw tilts to kind of close it off here
and on the second they sent me it was actually hooked
inside of this metal part here
which basically means you couldn't actually tilt the saw
because it was all jammed up there and it was pretty tricky
to unhook that. Again, kind of a quality issue.
Now, let's get back to this part here
being a little bit bent. If I put a straight edge
next to it you can see
it's really not that straight. And, I was thinking,
"Well, that's gonna mess up the alignment of the blade"
with respect to the slots." Now the funny thing is
on both saws they sent me, this part was bent.
That's about 40 thou from the front edge to the back edge,
or about a millimeter. Let's turn the blade
by 90 degrees and check it again.
Still same thing. And, the blade itself,
actually right now is not bad.
That's only about five thou worth of wobble.
The way the blade is misaligned, if I put the fence
on it here, it'll be closer to the fence here, and here.
So, at least it doesn't pinch the blade as long as the fence
is on the right side. And, if I make the blade
touch the fence on the front edge, I can still
push it quite a ways against the fence on the back.
The fence is actually something about this saw
that I quite like, because it's a fence
that locks on the back and on the front,
yet it squares itself up even if it's crooked
as soon as I tighten it, it squares itself up
before it locks on the back. That's kind of the best
of both worlds. It locks itself Square,
but then it's quite rigid because it's locked on both ends
Okay, maybe not super rigid.
I guess this is something that can be adjusted a little bit.
Here's another thing that's quite nice about this saw.
It's got a soft start.
It also regulates the speed of the motor
so it doesn't really spin out of control
like one of these really awful saws do.
There is definitely two classes of job sites saws,
the really cheap ones, which can be bought for,
on the order of $100.00. And then this type of saw
Which typically costs about $400.00.
That's pricing in Canadian dollars.
These ones, just awful.
These ones, I was hoping this would be comparable
to something like a hybrid table saw,
but, it's job site saw. And, I've looked at
other job site saws, and I don't really like
any of them, none of them really makes a good substitute
for a hybrid table saw. or a cabinet maker saw.
Look at that, a white mouse.
Holy crap.
No, it's a ferret.
Where is that sucker? There he is.
Come on, out with you.
Into a trap.
I can't find that creature anymore, but it sure is cute.
Not like a rat or a mouse.
It's safe to say, I wouldn't be chasing any
white little mouse-like creature in a sponsored video.
This miter gauge feels nice and solid
but in the slot, it has the usual amount to play
for a saw like this. So, I figured they must have
just cut these slots a little bit too wide.
But, then I was gonna try some of my jigs on this saw.
Here's my quickset tenon jig.
And, it just won't drop in the slot
It won't slide, it won't go in.
So, there's a problem. This slot is too tight.
So, measuring this slot with some calipers,
the slot measures 745 thou.
That's five thou too small, or about a tenth of a millimeter,
which means anything that's 3/4 of an inch
won't fit in there unless like this
it's quite a ways undersized.
And, because I make my jigs to have very little play
in the slot, none of my jigs actually fit on there because
they're all exactly 3/4 of an inch and this is too small.
I think they probably forgot to take into account
the thickness of the paint that they put on here.
Here's another thing I like about this saw.
The depth adjust mechanism feels very smooth and solid.
And then for the angle adjust, I'll loosen this
and this turns also nice and smooth and easily.
The saw has a pretty decent size table for a job site saw
and like most of them, it can be expanded this way
so I can rip up to two feet or 24 inches wide,
that's 60 centimeters. And it also has
this out-feed support that can be pulled out.
And, this is sloped down here a little bit,
so if your work piece drops down a little bit by the time
it gets to here, it pushes it back up.
On some saws, this would be an optional accessory.
And, here's comparing to my homemade table saw.
They both have about the same table size
although this one doesn't expand and the rip capacity
is much less. The homemade one is also
quite a bit louder.
Another thing about this saw, the way the insert works,
it's very shallow, and the way it's split in the back
makes it just about impossible to make your own
zero clearance insert. But this is actually a complaint
I have with job site saws in general.
In fact, most modern table saws with a riving knife,
it's very difficult to make your own
zero clearance inserts for.
The saw comes with a plastic push bike, and it's
the right style of push stick as far as I'm concerned
but these should really be used in pairs
and it only comes with one. My expectation had been
that a good job site saw would be usable in a way
that I use my hybrid table saw which is for cutting
precision joinery and that sort of stuff.
But this saw, like most job site saws,
just isn't up to it. I kind of got a perspective
on this when I visited my sister and she has another brand
of job site stuff and it was in rough shape
but they use it just for outside construction
and that's what these saws are meant for.
And the fact that the sawdust drops out the bottom
or that it is not super precise really doesn't matter
for that sort of thing. So, the company
that sells these saws, often has deep discounts.
The regular price for this saw is $450.00 Canadian.
I don't think it's worth quite that much.
I've seen it discounted by $100.00, which I think is about
the right price. And, sometimes they'll discount
things by half price. And, at half price
or even at $250.00, I would say that is a good deal
that I would recommend despite its flaws.
So, those of you that follow my YouTube channel will know
exactly what brand of saw this is, please don't mention it
in the comments, if you do, I will delete them.
Because the company did pay me for some other videos
and well, I don't want to hurt them necessarily.
But, lots of people have been asking, "What about the saw?"
"What about the saw?" Now you know about the saw.
So, if I shim this behind here a little bit
I've got a cardboard shim to stick in there.
It might bring into alignment.
Well, that just cut the misalignment down to less than
half of what it used to be. So, there's still hope
for this saw. The thing with cheap tools is,
you just got to be willing to tinker.
It's now a week later and I was just playing around
with the saw tilted at 45 degrees
when I noticed this.
It seems this trunnion back here has got quite a bit
of play in it.
So, there's a whole millimeter of play in here.
And, the zero degrees stop seems to not be terribly firm.
And, that's because it's against the table here
and that table just isn't that rigid.
You can see the whole table bulge up as I try to turn it
past zero.