Things With Strings

When ripping thin slices of wood, it's a lot safer to have a zero-clearance insert in the table saw as it prevents the thin slices from getting sucked down inside the saw an possibly jamming the blade. Whilst out running around Christmas time, I spotted a piece of UPVC cladding that had obviously blown of the back of a truck and was littering the countryside. I thought at the time that it might be useful for making a table saw insert and made a mental note to go back for it which I did a few days later. Clean up the countryside and do a bit of recycling, how's that for a bit of good citizenship? It had suffered a bit of damage as it had bounced off the road, and it was pretty filthy, but it still had the protective plastic on it in places, and it was a fair sized chunk. UPVC cladding Here is the insert I made (white) by tracing around the original one (yellow). You can see the difference in the width of the slot that the saw blade comes through. UPVC zero-clearance...

Since I made the DIY table saw a few weeks back from my old circular saw, I realised two things:- What a useful tool a table saw is What severe limitations my home built one had. The man issues I discovered were as follows:- The blade was too small. The blade in a circular saw is usually of a smaller diameter than that of a true table saw, and as such not as much protrudes above the table. This seriously limited the depth of cut I could make. Raising and lowering the blade was a major pain in the ass. The accuracy of cut was not great So, I bit the bullet and bought a real one. The DIY table saw is now officially retired!

Yes, I know I'm not the first person to make one of these, and I certainly won't be the last. When I started making the banjo block rim the other week, I quickly realised that it would have been a whole lot easier if the wood was at least a little bit square to start with, so I figured that before I made any more it would be nice to have a table saw to square up the source material. Naturally I didn't really want to go out and buy one if I was only going to use it every blue moon so I decided to put my old circular saw and some scrap wood to good use and build my own. The picture below show the finished article, complete with fence. The stand is from a broken old workmate-a-like I had lying around, the top is from some kitchen cabinet material as is the fence. I added a safety NVR switch, because it's dangerous enough as it is, and I didn't want to add further risks. Anyway, enough of that, here are the pictures DIY table saw circular saw mounting ...