First piece of woodworking equipment

[Phil John]

Just ordered the Grizzly G0623X sliding table saw. :D

This will be my first major woodworking tool. It's a bit later (by a few years) than I had hoped, but better late than never.

Wifey approved the disbursal of funds, so its on its way. Thanks to Mark for answering all my questions regarding the saw and delivery.

I'll post some photos once it arrives and perhaps some photos as I attempt to build a bookcase.

Best regards,

Phil

[Rod Sheridan]

Congartulations Phil, as the owner of a slider I know you'll enjoy using it............Regards, Rod.

[Mark Engel]

Congratulations Phil. I'm sure you will be very happy with the saw.

[ed vitanovec]

Congradulations! I am happy with mine and look forward to reading your personal review of your new G0623X.

[Ralph Butts]

+1 I am also happy with mine. Look forward to your review.

[david brum]

Congrats Phil. Special congratulations for getting a decent tool up front, rather than working your way up the table saw food chain.

[Phil John]

It has arrived! I took some photos, so I'll post those later.

I haven't assembled it yet (... it's still in the crate) and I don't have 240v in the garage yet either. The plan was to have that ready, but my mother in law and sister in law are about to arrive for the week, so all attention has been on getting the flooring down in the front room. The wifey decided it was a good idea to shampoo the carpet as well, so that was today and yesterday's job.

Any suggestions on a good starting blade? The saw is going to be treated gently and with care, so I'm happy to spend a little bit more up front if the blade is going to be higher quality. I imagine I'm going to be using it to slice and dice cherry, walnut and both cheap and decent plywood. It may see some MDF as well if I build some speaker cabinets. I was thinking a Forest Woodworker I or II, but I'm not sure on the kerf or teeth number. Thoughts?

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Phil, you're asking more of a blade than is possible, in my opinion.

I would start with a good 24 tooth rip blade and either a 60 or 80 tooth Alternate Top Bevel blade for crosscutting and plywood use.

A lower quality combination blade can stay on the saw for dirty jobs like non cabinet grade plywood construction lumber etc.

When I'm breaking down rough stock (solid wood) I leave the rip blade and rip and crosscut with it, since the pieces are a bit oversized at this stage.

I typically buy FS tools blades, expect to pay in the region of $100 for a good blade..............Rod.

P.S. The above tooth counts are for 10 inch blades, raise them for 12" blades since you probably use a 12" blade in your saw.............Rod.

[Ted Baca]

I agree that you asking a lot of a blade. But I am a Forrest devotee, and I would say that if you are going to buy one blade to start, go with the WWII 40 tooth standard kerf. You have the power in that new behemoth of a saw!! 5 HP with 240, I think you will have all the power you ever need. I have read where some like the thin kerf blades as well as the 1/8". I had the TK on my sears craftsman 1.5 HP and that was perfect for that. I bought a Sawstop 3HP and have plenty of power with the Std Kerf and feel that I get more stability. If you can swing it to buy 2 then get a 48 tooth WWII and 30 tooth. I have used Forrest for about 20 years now and never have tried any other since. One last peice of advice is always end it back to Forrest for sharpening. OK one more last peice of advice is check with forrestbladesonline.com, they have the best prices and great folks to work with. Enjoy you saw, I looked at on line and the WOW Meter is pegged!!:D

[Mats Bengtsson]

I agree that you asking a lot of a blade. But I am a Forrest devotee, and I would say that if you are going to buy one blade to start, go with the WWII 40 tooth standard kerf. You have the power in that new behemoth of a saw!! ...

The power in the saw is enough. But the quality of the cut is still going to suffer from using the wrong blade. If you now have a really good saw, use it to do really good cuts. Buy minimum two blades, one to rip and one to cross cut (which also is good for MDF).

--- Mats ---

[Myk Rian]

I'm a Freud guy. Get a combo blade. If the saw comes with a blade, use that for ripping.
Quite frankly, for on the cheap, get an Irwin combo pack.

[Jeff Hamilton Jr.]

I have a Freud "Premier Fusion" 12" blade (48T - functional equiv of 40T on a 10" blade) on my MiniMax slider and can tell you it cuts very well and usually leaves a glass-like surface in it's wake. I have other blades for "dirty" or questionable cuts, but this lives on my saw 90% of the time.Congrats on the slider. It took me quite awhile to "retool" my thinking re: slider cutting vs. good old American table saw design. It EXCELS at crosscutting, but I have to admit that I still long for my old cabinet saw when it comes to some narrow rips. It is a completely different way to think about using a TS. I believe the slider is MUCH safer and only limited by your imagination - thus far, I'm not very imaginative!

[Jeff Hamilton Jr.]

Oh. One more thing. With 5hp motors, you Don't need a thin kerf blade. Get a STD blade; the extra stability of that 1/16th of an inch will amaze you.

[Phil John]

Thanks for all the feedback - I guess I should have realized there is no one size fits all blade :D I'm thinking of trying out Irwin's Marathon line of blades as a starter set in 24, 40 and 80 teeth. The mostly appear to be thin kerf though... Should I be worried about blade stability? Grizzly offers a Forrest blade stabilizer that I could always get...

Either way, that starter set should keep me going for plenty of time - enough at least to work with some basic projects and find out what I am using most.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Phil

[ed vitanovec]

I've been using the Freud Diablo 80 tooth on mine, its a thin kerf blade. The quality of cut is really smooth and I have not had any issues with tear out when I don't use the scoring blade. For dados I have the cheap Harbor Freight dado blade, I use this for stuff I build for out doors like my gazebo. I do have the Freud super dado for the nicer projects. The Grizzly G0623X comes with a riving knife for thin kerf blades, its .090 wide. I'm sure the 1/8" blade would work fine with the stock riving knife but maybe you should look to see if the riving knife should match the blade width. Looking forward to reading your personal review of the Grizzly G0623X.
Regards!
Ed

[Mike Konobeck]

You will love the slider. Takes a bit to get used to but no going back for me now.

I used to think that the Forrest was the end all blade when I had a contractor saw so I naturally ordered up a Forrest 12" WWII for my combo before I actually had it setup and tried it out. On my old contractor saw it did most everything OK but never anything perfect with the exception of cross cutting. Ripping and ply were its biggest weaknesses. Ripping blades are MUCH more efficient at ripping (of course) but I just had no idea how great they are until I was struggling with some hard maple. Same goes for ply. Getting chipout on some prefinished maple ply for some cabinets and picked up a ply blade and eliminated 99% of the chipout.

Stick with high quality blades. Really can't go wrong. I would stay away from the Irwin line. Lots of options out there. Forrest makes all of the different style blades but as you can see everyone has their favorites.

Good luck setting up the saw and starting to make sawdust.

[Mats Bengtsson]

...The mostly appear to be thin kerf though... Should I be worried about blade stability? Grizzly offers a Forrest blade stabilizer that I could always get...

There are two advantages with thin blades: They do not demand as much power to cut through, and the loss of material is less. The advantage with a thicker blade is stability, and with stability comes a better cut.

Go with high quality blades, the vendor will see to that they are not too thin.

--- Mats ---

[Ryan Mooney]

One other blade manufacturer to consider is Tenryu. They seem to be comparable to the forest quality wise (into the niggling on details territory, I'd take either one :)) and are generally a smidge cheaper (I ended up with some because they were a fair bit cheaper if you added in the special boring that the forest required for my saw whereas the tenryu offered it as one of the stock blade configs).

According to the shark guard website, the riving knife can (or should) be a smidge narrower than your kerf and makes somewhat compelling arguments in support of that.. I haven't seen many other well considered arguments on knife vs blade width (but would be interested if there are any ;)).

[Phil John]

Thanks for the feedback everyone - I'll let you know what I go for.

Next set of questions. I emailed Grizzly to find out about cords. They recommend an L6-30 plug. Anyone have any recommendations on the best place to buy a lead? If I am going to wire my garage, should I just use these receptacles? I'm thinking of getting a jointer/planer combo and bandsaw down the track, so I would like to install 3 or 4 outlets at once. If so, should I only run 10/2 (on my understanding the L6-30 only uses 2 hots and a ground)... instead of 10/3, or should I just cap the neutral in case I need to run a regular 240/250v receptacle down the track?

Anyone have a good recommendation on how long the lead should be for the 623x (mine will be sitting to the side of a 2 car garage - so not exactly that far away from the receptacle I will install)? Worst case scenario I'm going to set it up and work out the distance to the wall, but I was thinking of perhaps getting 15 feet and then trimming as necessary.

....once I am done I am going to post a review that includes all this info so the next guy like me knows exactly what he needs to do to get the saw working. :)