The Next Unisaw

[David LaRue]

In another thread there was a comment on Delta dropping the low end Uni-saw. I have heard similar, but with a twist; Delta is in the process of developing a premium saw (non-US made BTW) that has some neat features built in. I can only speculate, but if you take a look at what features I would like to see are:

Left tilt with a sliding table from the Dewalt, but closer to the blade like the Euro saws
A Riving knife that disappears for dados
Much improved dust collection with 6" ports
Maybe a "Saw-Stop" option?
Large paddle off switch
A fence that accepts accessories more readily
...
What would you put on your wish list? :confused:
I believe the Shopmaster Brand is also in jeopardy, and will likely be re-branded B&D for the remaining non-overlap / poor sales Delta Shopmaster

[Doug Shepard]

I've often wondered why TS makers haven't adopted spindle locks. Routers have them. Biscuit Jointers have them. CMS's have them. Why not TS's?? Sure would make blade changing a whole lot easier.

[Ellen Benkin]

Additions to the wish list:
--EASY to use, EASY in and out, splitter and cawls
--Either a high quality miter gauge(Incra?), or no miter gauge at all
--Standard feature -- overarm blade guard with dust collection
--Standard feature -- Forrest blade (or other brand name if the buyer so chooses)
--Several throat plates -- one for blade tilt and one for zero clearance and maybe a blank for whatever you want to make it.

In other words, I'd like the saw to come with all the features that most of us have bought to make our saws more functional.

I hope someone from Delta is reading this.

[JayStPeter]

I want dust collection designed into the machine. Not just a hole in the cabinet added as an afterthought. It should comprise of over and under blade collection. The over DC and splitter (preferably riving knife) should be easy to use and store for dadoing. Something like the high-end euro machines have. No more silly blade guards we toss aside, and no more need for clunky overhead systems.
That alone would make me happy. But, the option of a close to blade slider would be cool as well.

Jay

[Dev Emch]

The best table saws have already been built. My wish list has been fullfilled with vintage machines such as the 1970s Martin T-17 (pre panel siider design) and the oliver 88 which comes in dozens of variations.

One thing I would like to see is the elimination of 5/8 inch arbors. That is a freakin router bit! Martin T-17s which are now considered junk by corporate america and collectables by vintage folks were shipped with a 1.25 inch arbor! By the way, if you thinking about using shaper cutters on this saw, your right. Been there, done that. Works Great! Olivers were most often shipped with 1 inch arbors and some had optional 1 1/8 and 1 1/4 inch arbors as well.

Saw stop options and huge cut off padal switches are not needed. There is a red button on the bottom of my T-17 which can be kicked with the front of your toe. This was an OSHA requirement and is actually kinda nice. But overall, I would caution anyone about a false sense of security from these so called safty devices. Learn to use the saw correctly by using correct techniques and you will be O.K. Take a class if you have to but learn the correct techniques! The issue I have with the saw stop is that it is a rather violent way of stopping blades. And according to the owner of northfield machinery in MN who still makes the older heavy iron, (www.northfieldwoodworking.com), this device is actually itself a safety hazard. On larger, carbide tipped blades, the teeth have a habbit of comming off with extreme kinetic energry. In english, that is schrapnel! I for one do not wish to have a doctor pulling out forrest blade schrapnel from every part of the front side of my body when this thing kicks in by accident. Secondly, its a one shot device. An aluminium alloy boot is jammed into the blade path at the same time that the entire yoke assembly is dumped into the bowls of the saw cabinet to get the blade out of path in milli-seconds. You will now need to get both a new shoe and a new blade as most blades of any quality will be destroyed by this violence.

As for spindle locks, my T-17 has one. You shove a lock rod forward to lock the spindle. Change blade and pull it backwards.

Most olivers and the martin have exensive dust collection. They are running about 4 to 6 inch dust ports and have "blade flasks" designed to move dust to the port **AND** to keep as much from the motor half of the cabinet as possible. Shark fins are also used. There is a sliding bolt just forward of the blade on my martin which can slide forward and backwards to accomadate different blades. You turn 1/4 turn, slide the shark fin down using its slot onto this bolt, adjust for blade diameter and tighten 1/4 turn. Done. Also comes out that easy for use with dado and what not.

Some of the martins, including mine, also have a tiny scoring motor for use on sheet goods. Mine was not working when I got it and I have not yet really needed to use it. Hopefully this summer, I wll get to making some repairs on my martin. The off switch does not work and the scoring motor does not yet work either. I use the mainline disconnect switch to kill the saw. This is an easy fix but I think I need to modify and upgrade the electric package and I have not the time right now to do that. Hopefully in June. The paint is also dismal but there is no time to paint a machine than the summer!

I have had a similar wish list for a long time and have looked into this reality check often. What I found are cheesy new machines lacking many options and sporting very high price tags. So, to get the price down and to find the options you all want on a future saw, I turned to the past where I found all this and more. I like full format saws which some folks think are too big. Fair enough. I also found older Delta/Rocwell unisaws which are darn nice machines and excellent starting points for the saws of your dreams. When Boyd Cottington begins to build a super hot rod, does he start with a brand new car? Nope. Often, its a rust bucket or scrap yard queen like his junk yard dog was. Just because the car was made long before I was born does not mean you cannot install elctronic hillborn injection! Same applies here. Go out and find yourself an old used saw that you like and restore it and install all your goodie list items from the after market parts industry. Companies like tiger stop, Incra, Robland (sliding tables), etc.

[Dave Wright #2]

Dev,

No problem with your position, but I don't like it when people toss about misinformation. I have a SawStop and have looked very closely at its mechanism. I have also seen several live demos of the brake activation, and carefully inspected the resulting fused blade/pawl. I do not think there is any way that activation of the brake will spew carbide shrapnel around the saw interior - let alone up at the operator since on account of the zero clerance insert.

The aluminum pawl is much softer than the carbide teeth, and instantly grab them. The teeth just disappear into the pawl. Ever throw rocks into sand dunes at the beach? The rocks don't bounce back. They just get sucked in.

Regards,

Dave

[Bart Leetch]

1.The best table saws have already been built. My wish list has been fulfilled with vintage machines .

2. One thing I would like to see is the elimination of 5/8 inch arbors.That is a freaking router bit!

3. I also found older Delta/Rockwell Unisaws which are darn nice machines and excellent starting points for the saws of your dreams.


1. This is understandable because these machines were meant for production work.

2.I don't necessarily agree with this. The average home shop or Small cabinet shop may not need a 1.25 inch arbor & will get by fine with a 5/8" arbor. The blades are more expensive & the average person can't go into a regular tool store & purchase blades or cutters for this equipment thus there is more expense involved if there is a supplier close by where it can be purchased or there is time involved searching on the internet or by phone. There are real reasons why the industry built these smaller machines as in Unisaws & shapers & 8" jointers in these sizes. I am not sure how big an area is required for some of these machines you are mentioning, but some if not most small shops may not have the room for them.

3. I agree I like my 1953 Delta Unisaw.

[Dev Emch]

The oliver "DUKE" or Delta-Unisaw-Killer" is a model 232. It is virtually the same size as a unisaw but is cast iron to the floor and takes a 1 inch spindle. Again, a saw this size likes 10 inch blades but a 1 inch hole. The charge for boring this 1 inch hole into a blade witha 5/8 bore is 7 bucks at forrest. Many of these older "pro" saws used 1 inch spindles and not the 5/8 inch spindle because the 5/8 inch spindle can flex under certain loads. For example, olivers were often used to make or fabricate core boxes. One way of doing this for larger core boxes was on the table saw. The typical woodworker will recognize this process instantly... COVE MOLDINGS. With a 1 inch bore, I can take much deeper and more aggressive cuts. When one looks at a unisaw or PM-66 with a full bore side feed table, beismeyer fence and possiblity an outfeed table and maybe a sliding table on the left side, your talking about a sizeable investment in real estate. At this point, I can slip in a martin or oliver 88 and hardly realize its there!

As for mis-information regarding the saw stop. Well, the guy who invented it holds a patent on it and is now selling a saw made in taiwan which features this option. He has also pursued the changing of OSHA type standards to require these features in a standardized form. In other words, not mentioning the saw stop outright, the standards committees are supposed to adopt these features as requirements for future saw sales in the US. Now how can one person push these features as a required safety standard but also hold everyone culpable in the event that they dont pay him royalties for violating his patent? If this wasn't about greed, then he should do what mercedes did with the crumple zone patent... give it away to the world for free. But the facts are the facts. The attempt to put this requirement into the standards is a feeble way of blackmailing companies into having to pay his royalties. Furthermore, every major manufacturer in this country has already evaluated his invention and effectively turned it down. Northfield tested this feature with 16 inch, carbide tip blades and found that it does remove teeth. Yes, the teeth are very strong but they are carbide. They can fracture and splinter but significantly, they are attached to the saw with silver solder! Yup, they are not welded on but brazed on with silver type solders. I have seen no reports of flying teeth with 10 inch blades but have seen it with 14, 16 and 18 inch blades. Most of the saws using these blades are direct drive machines which means they are running at a wee bit under 3600 RPM. What is the spindle speed on your saw? Then look at how the tip speed changes and how this increase in tip speed can affect the tooth during this violent stop. You physics majors help me out here... remind us again the forumla for momentum and accecleration? P=mass*velocity and Force = mass * accecleration. The larger the blade diameter, the faster your tip speed.

So in closing, I have seen it work just fine on 10 inch cabinet saws but I will not be in the same room when your using it on a large format saw with 14 to 16 inch blades. And will this be a requirement for use on shapers as well? Look at the meat cutters we swing on shapers? Esp. when your using a rub collar with a panel raiser like a schmidt innovator on curved serpentine panels!

[Ken Waag]

David, Doug, Ellen, and Jay,

All great ideas, and you covered my bases as well. Many of them are on the SawStop, so some of this advancement has been made. I had speculated on another thread, but this is the first I heard it confirmed, that Delta and WMH (Jet, Powermatic, Etc.) would likely be reacting to the SawStop (and I'm willing to bet that's the impetus behind Delta's new saw). I imagine they will incorporate many of the features on the SawStop and hoefully some of the other mentioned here. Another example of competition leading to improvement. (My other prediction, for the record, is that one or both, make a bid to buy SawStop out)

Also I have noticed that what Ellen suggested ("I'd like the saw to come with all the features that most of us have bought to make our saws more functional.") has finally started to happen, although not so much with tablesaws. Bandsaws, as an example, are now coming standard with what were aftermarket items like the tension release lever, better blade guides. larger tables and FastTrack like fences. Maybe Mfgrs will catch on to all the things sold aftermarket to tablesaw users. Oh, one tablesaw example just dawned on me. We take it for granted now, but it was Biesemeyer that forced the biggies to offer decent fences.

[Ken Waag]

Dev,

Like Dave Wright, I agree with many of your feelings about vintage machines. But I do take issue with some of your thoughts on the Sawstop. In order to avoid hijacking this thread which is interesting in it's own right, perhaps we should start a new one. I'd like to share opinions so I hope to see you there. I'll post a thread in a moment.

Ken

[Dev Emch]

Ken...
Excellent points. But let me bring some more history to bear here. Lets talk about the oliver E and F fence. Both are identical but the F fence can actually tilt relative to the table. So you can tilt either the arbor or the fence. Both the E and F fence are T fences or patternmakers fences which was the basis for the Incra fence system. It is true that by mounting the fence in the center of the machine and not at the front of the machine, angular errors actually cancel each other out. Look into incra's agruments on this issue. They borrowed the whole design from oliver (and other) designs going back 50 to 100 years. HTC has recently (within the last couple of years or so) offered a beismeyer fence with micrometer adjust. I think HTC has a patent on this as well. The martin fence was also equiped with micrometer adjust. But the first fences to offer micrometer adjust were the oliver type T fences which is what you find on olivers as well as northfields and more recently, the incra fence.

Instead of spending the money on a saw stop, I would rather have a hard core DRO or digital read out. This would comprise a box with 1 to 1.25 inch bright red digits reading out to thousandths with the ability to recal as needed by button or wand. So if I put in a new blade, I can put the recal bar on the table and let it contact the fence face and the blade teeth to reset relative zero and then display the exact position of where my fence face is right now and do this within 5 to 10 seconds of labor.

[Greg Mann]

Dev,

I just noticed you are relatively new here so let me say "Welcome Aboard." It is obvious you have alot of knowledge about woodworking machinery, particularly BIG woodworking machinery, but I think you may be missing the point a little. Dave mentioned six things, the SawStop feature was the only one with a question mark and a maybe. I think it is clear how you feel about that feature but most of your arguments focus on its relative merits on equipment beyond the scope of its present application. Just like your enthusiasm in encouraging a shaper over a router table for someone who admits to little router experience to begin with, it appears that your passion with tablesaws runs to industrial sizes as well. I applaud your knowledge and passion for the heavy duty stuff but I think Dave wants to know what would make a great smaller shop machine, to wit, the ultimate Unisaw. If Delta were to develop such a tool I believe it would be to enhance its position in the non-industrial market.

Greg

[Brad Olson]

Three things I want to see and should be absolutely required on a redesign...

1) TRUE riving knife

2) Blade shroud dust collection with the option of having a 4, 6 or 7" port

3) Locking arbor for blade changes

These features are already on the "low end" tablesaw made my Ryobi (BT3100) and I see no reason they shouldn't be on better saws as well

Some other features I'd like to see start becoming mainstream

1) Folding outfeed table standard (much like the new sears cab saw)

2) Dust collection on the stock guard

Some other features

1) Integrated mobile base kind of like what Minimax does with its machines

2) larger dameter arbor. I have to agree with the above statements, a bigger arbor would be a plus and the marketplace would adapt.

[Dev Emch]

I have to agree with many items mentioned by Brad. I have had to cobble industrial machines to get these features in my ***HOME*** shop! Partly because of price and partly because of availability.

One thing is clear in many home shops. Space is a premium. Hoffman in germany came up with the prissom shaper. It is not available here and if it were, would be out of the price range. But it has a unique feature that would be nice on a table saw. Its spindle arbor can go from 90 degrees straight up to 0 degrees flat. So having a smaller saw with a unisaw format would be the size I would like to see. Then, I can place *either* saw blades on this thing or shaper cutters on this thing. Of course, the fence would be two sided and rail moveable. That way, it can function as either a shaper fence or a table saw fence.

Another feature I would like to see is the elimination of the mitre gage slot. Add on a sliding table which can move upwards and over. So if I need to do some quick cross cutting, I just crank up the slider, move it left to the saw kerf and get to work. When done, move the slider right, crank it down. And when not in use, fold it down.

There are also sliding tables which slap onto the top of machines. These are smaller units with tables about 10 inches square that ride about 1 inch over the main surface. You toss one up on your shaper or saw, attach with two bolts and now you have a slider. When done, take it off and hang it on the wall.

But what makes the NEO-UNISAW cool is gizz and gizz costs money. So once again, your pushing a string uphill. Its a balance between the right features and the right costs. I would definitely be pushing for the 0 degree tilt spindle and the pulley drive motor so I can reconfigure as a shaper if needed. Remember, I can work wonders with this type of saw as it can function as a table saw, shaper, moulder, jointer. About the only thing it can't do is plane. And its compact. By resusing your internal hardware and not just slapping on an extra machine and motors, you save cost and space. Look at a robland X-31 for example. Yes it shares resources; however, it has no less than 3 motors and weighs a bunch. Its like you glued three machines together.

[Greg Mann]

snipped
By resusing your internal hardware and not just slapping on an extra machine and motors, you save cost and space. Look at a robland X-31 for example. Yes it shares resources; however, it has no less than 3 motors and weighs a bunch. Its like you glued three machines together.

A combo without the redundancy. Design it with the capability to exactly replicate any set-up in seconds and you have the best of all worlds. On this we are in complete agreement. ;)

Greg

[Jeff Sudmeier]

I have always wondered why spindle locks aren't included on more saws as well. Mine has one, but it is one of the few.

I standard blade guard with good dust collection would be great as well!