Michael Yadfar
05-10-2014, 7:00 PM
Early in my shop building, I bought a Ridgid portable contractor saw. If I were to buy a table saw now, I would have gone down a completely different path. At the time someone recommended it, and when I was at Home Depot I saw it was 30% off, so I jumped right on it. It's not a bad saw; it stores well in my small shop, the blade stays square, the fence isn't bad, it's portable so I can easily use it for jobs outside the shop, and it's got enough power to at least do what I want it to do. The drawbacks are basic things like small table size, lower quality, ok fence, having to double check to make sure everything's accurate, not having a cast iron table, and not having some capabilities of a cabinet saw like attachable outfeed tables. The first day I got the saw, stupid me, I cut a full sheet of 3/4" plywood myself with no extra support. I still have all ten fingers, but it was not a pleasurable experience. I guess I got too used to the previous saw I learned a lot of woodworking on, a really nice and big SawStop table saw.
The biggest issue, as mentioned, is me not having capabilities for an outfeed table and there's none on the market obviously for this saw. I guess on the job site they use a few guys? Toying with the idea, I've came across very few results from the internet on a DIY outfeed table for this saw. The only one I really came across the guy didn't have much detail on how to build, so I don't know how it attached to the saw. The thing I was thinking about doing was just building a table perfect height to the saw unattached. I don't know if this poses a safety hazard or not
The biggest issue, as mentioned, is me not having capabilities for an outfeed table and there's none on the market obviously for this saw. I guess on the job site they use a few guys? Toying with the idea, I've came across very few results from the internet on a DIY outfeed table for this saw. The only one I really came across the guy didn't have much detail on how to build, so I don't know how it attached to the saw. The thing I was thinking about doing was just building a table perfect height to the saw unattached. I don't know if this poses a safety hazard or not