Forum Responses
We are looking for another table saw and we are going to use the saw we have now for dadoing only. I can spend $2,000 on a saw and I have found many saws used on auction and various other places but can’t find a happy medium between getting the Rikon sliding table for $2,000 or a used 3-5 hp sawn and then a sliding table add-on. A used saw and sliding table will be almost $2000. The Rikon saw itself is probably durable and it comes with a two year warranty but how durable is it’s slider? As I’m typing I thought of maybe two used saws, one to rip lumber with an out feed roller and one for sheet goods.
Right now we only have one saw and it is difficult to be productive sometimes. All of our sheet good has clean edges so would it be feasible to trust that crosscutting off the fence would result in square panels? If this would work I could afford two used saws for under $2,000 and make a large melamine table for a sheet-goods saw. I was looking at the Grizzly pro cab 5 hp and was going to use one machine for ripping and sheet goods but now that I think about it two different machines would speed up production a lot. Would two 3 hp saws be efficient enough or would the weight and the large cast iron surface of a big machine be better?
It’s a big decision for us and it needs to be the right choice and that’s why I’m asking for your assistance. How about old Rockwell saws? I see a ton in great shape everywhere. It may be short rail for ripping and long for sheets, and then I would be much under $2,000 and have money for nice new blades.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor M:
You don’t mention what type of construction, or style of cabinetry you make. Of course this is all my opinion based on my experiences. If you are building faceframe cabinets, and using traditional joinery for the carcass (dados or nails and glue) I do not think a sliding attachment or saw is justified. Your panels should be straight enough. It is the faceframe that accepts the hardware and doors so the carcass has a lot of tolerance for out of square.
If you are using dowel construction, or if you are building frameless cabinets, a slider is a must. No add-on will come close to the real thing, but a slider is not in your budget. Adding a sliding table to a perfectly good saw is not going to help you. The add-on sliding tables do not feed the same way. When you hear the owners of large sliders talking about the time savings their saw offers them it is because of features and details that the add-on’s do not have.
The Grizzly saws are great. I would just get the three horse saw. It is plenty tough. For your primary sizing saw you definitely want a melamine out feed table that extends at least 60" behind the blade. That way a ripped sheet can pass through the blade and not fall off (teeter-totter style) the outfeed table.
The best thing you can do is save some more cash and get a real slider. Laguna and Grizzly both offer some great saws for 6K. You can get a used saw at an auction as well. A scoring slider will allow you to process material faster than anything else. In my shop we can process material faster and cleaner using a manual slider than the 150K CNC we used before. Also if some day you get crazy enough to ignore all the dowel construction nay-sayer’s you will only need a boring machine.
I paid $235 for the most recent acquisition with a 78" Beis fence and over-arm guard. My first saw, a 54' Uni which I bought many years ago cost me $200, plus another $200 for a replacement fence. In the 15 or so years I've had it I replaced the motor, the bearings, and the belts and it's still running great. So between the two saws I've spent less than $1,000 even with the replacement parts and they've made me money for years.
As the others have said the sliding attachments are not the same as a dedicated slider. Mine works ok but it certainly has its shortcomings. If I survive the economic downturn I'll be looking into a used vertical panel saw to improve my sheetgood processing.
At 50" long it is basically a glorified straight edge (3/4" x 3" plywood rip) with a 1/4" plywood base that is ripped wide enough for the entire saw to ride on. It extends right up next to the blade providing a zero clearance, splinter free cutting action similar to the commercially available track saws that are the latest trend in panel processing. The major difference is price.
I used that saw for five or six years and ran it is much as a two man shop can. The last year and a half I had that shop I switched to CNC’ing all my sheet goods. Most jobs cost me $700 to outsource and the turnaround was 24 hours. So on a job of 20 linear feet of face frame cabinets I would have fully assembled cabinets ready for finishing two to three days after the client made the down payment. Plus there were no mistakes, less waste and faster assembly due to the blind dado construction. I can’t stress how that changed my business. It was a two man shop that could out-produce most of the shops three or four times bigger. The only hitch is the software. But there are lots of inexpensive (even free) options. You have to take the classes if you really want to benefit from it. Now I am in the Philippines opening a large production shop doing 32 mm stuff.
