Hi, I'm new to the forum and joined here to speak to like-minded people.
I started woodworking 11 months ago and have been totally hooked ever since, I wake in the middle of the night most nights thinking about whatever project I might be working on. I can't wait to get in from work each day so I can go outside in the shed and cut up some wood!
I have 2 kids and a mortgage so everything has to be done on a budget, of course, I have suffered huge frustrations trying to do accurate work with cheap tools. The amount of stuff I have bought and sent back as it's not straight or properly aligned is crazy.
I made myself a table saw form an inverted track saw which honestly was fairly good, but I was in a 6x8 shed which housed 2 kids bikes and at 6 3" was a squeeze to say the least.
I have now been able to make a dream come true and have built a 12 x 10 workshop in the garden, the amount of space I have now in comparison is awesome. I sometimes sit in there on my handmade mortise and tenon stool and marvel.
I bought myself an Einhell tables saw, the one with the sliding miter. It only cost £240.00 which for me is affordable. Now I know for sure that you only ever get what you pay for in this life so I wasn't expecting too much. One thing I have learned though is that sometimes you can tune a cheap thing up until it becomes acceptable, I have done this myself, and its how I'm affording woodworking.
The fence is crap, the miter is crap, both as expected. But all I really want is the motor and blade as I'm building a workbench for the saw and will be making a fence and sled etc. The blade was out of alignment from the table and miter slots, with no information on this model of saw I managed to re-align the blade and changed it for a Freud. The cuts were not very good, there were loads semi-circles all down the length of the rip cuts.
I found that the blade seems to be off when I slowly rotate it and put my combination square in the miter slot the teeth touch for half a revolution but then don't touch for the other half. I doubt I can fix this issue so therefore the saw is going back as faulty.
Which after all that babbling leads to me my question, which saw to go for?
I'm really leaning towards the bosch gts, its around £450 which is the top end of my budget, but it looks solid and reliable which is important to me.
I want something I can achieve a level of accuracy with, I would like to pop a sled on it and do things like tenons and dados etc.
I can easily build it into a bench and may even be able to use the fence on this one?
I also really like the Dewalt in the same kind of spec, the rack and pinion fence is very appealing to me but the cut depth is less on this and I wonder if I might regret that one day? The Dewalt also seem hard to find in 240 volt for a decent price, maybe out of my budget.
Any advice welcome.
Many thanks
Paul
I started woodworking 11 months ago and have been totally hooked ever since, I wake in the middle of the night most nights thinking about whatever project I might be working on. I can't wait to get in from work each day so I can go outside in the shed and cut up some wood!
I have 2 kids and a mortgage so everything has to be done on a budget, of course, I have suffered huge frustrations trying to do accurate work with cheap tools. The amount of stuff I have bought and sent back as it's not straight or properly aligned is crazy.
I made myself a table saw form an inverted track saw which honestly was fairly good, but I was in a 6x8 shed which housed 2 kids bikes and at 6 3" was a squeeze to say the least.
I have now been able to make a dream come true and have built a 12 x 10 workshop in the garden, the amount of space I have now in comparison is awesome. I sometimes sit in there on my handmade mortise and tenon stool and marvel.
I bought myself an Einhell tables saw, the one with the sliding miter. It only cost £240.00 which for me is affordable. Now I know for sure that you only ever get what you pay for in this life so I wasn't expecting too much. One thing I have learned though is that sometimes you can tune a cheap thing up until it becomes acceptable, I have done this myself, and its how I'm affording woodworking.
The fence is crap, the miter is crap, both as expected. But all I really want is the motor and blade as I'm building a workbench for the saw and will be making a fence and sled etc. The blade was out of alignment from the table and miter slots, with no information on this model of saw I managed to re-align the blade and changed it for a Freud. The cuts were not very good, there were loads semi-circles all down the length of the rip cuts.
I found that the blade seems to be off when I slowly rotate it and put my combination square in the miter slot the teeth touch for half a revolution but then don't touch for the other half. I doubt I can fix this issue so therefore the saw is going back as faulty.
Which after all that babbling leads to me my question, which saw to go for?
I'm really leaning towards the bosch gts, its around £450 which is the top end of my budget, but it looks solid and reliable which is important to me.
I want something I can achieve a level of accuracy with, I would like to pop a sled on it and do things like tenons and dados etc.
I can easily build it into a bench and may even be able to use the fence on this one?
I also really like the Dewalt in the same kind of spec, the rack and pinion fence is very appealing to me but the cut depth is less on this and I wonder if I might regret that one day? The Dewalt also seem hard to find in 240 volt for a decent price, maybe out of my budget.
Any advice welcome.
Many thanks
Paul