Radial Arm Saw Table Modifications

[Doug Walls]

I'm looking to make a bunch of angled & mitered dado cuts on my RAS & some of the pieces will be fairly short under 6".
I'm planning on adding some "T" track to my saw's table so I can use hold downs to keep the pieces in-place.

Just wondering if anyone has came up with a good RAS table design that uses "T" tracks or jigs for stock hold down :confused:

Doug

[Kurt Kintner]

Doug.....I modified mine like this.... I milled a T slot in the fence and only use it for positioning a stop, but would be very easy to make the hold-downs you require....

[Doug Walls]

I milled a T slot in the fence and only use it for positioning a stop Yeah I've seen several designs that add T-track to the fences, But I'm not really sure if a hold down off of just the fence would be long enough? I will probably include a T-track stop to the fence, Since it looks like a good addition to the fence set-up.

What I'm looking to do is install the T-track right into the top of the table!
Searching the web I've seen two versions of what I want to do, Vertical style & horizontal style!
Just trying to figure out what style I want to use?

Doug

[Chris True]

Yeah I've seen several designs that add T-track to the fences, But I'm not really sure if a hold down off of just the fence would be long enough? I will probably include a T-track stop to the fence, Since it looks like a good addition to the fence set-up.



You can make an L bracket that supports a pivot shaft, then the shaft goes through a long lever with a foot to bear against the piece to be cut close to the blade and you hand at the end of the lever is well away. That way lots of cuts can be done quickly since you just raise the lever, move the next piece in and apply a bit of pressure to hold it in place.

Don't even need T track for that, just screw the L bracket to the fence which is disposable anyway...

[andy bessette]

just cut a piece of plywood with the angle you need and use that against the RAS fence.

[Doug Walls]

Don't even need T track for that, just screw the L bracket to the fence which is disposable anyway...


just cut a piece of plywood with the angle you need and use that against the RAS fence.

Yeah I realize I could just make a simple jig & attach it to the fence or even the table, But that's not what I'm looking to do!
I'll still be making a jig to hold the pieces, But by using the T-track I can make it easier to adjust & set back up if needed.

Doug

[Rick Potter]

How about a simple 1X2 stick. Round one end a bit, put a dowel in the middle somewhere, drill a hole in the table, so the stick is close to the blade. Insert piece to cut, use left hand to put pressure on the piece, pull saw handle with right hand.

Hey Kurt.. does that DC setup on your RAS work well?

[Kurt Kintner]

How about a simple 1X2 stick. Round one end a bit, put a dowel in the middle somewhere, drill a hole in the table, so the stick is close to the blade. Insert piece to cut, use left hand to put pressure on the piece, pull saw handle with right hand.

Hey Kurt.. does that DC setup on your RAS work well?


Yes, it works very well....The only time dust gets on the table is when shaving
a little material off the end of a piece....

[Clint Bach]

Why not put both vertical and horizontal t track in the table? Sounds like the best of both worlds. You may have to put a gap in the tracks where they cross but that's no big deal.

c

[Doug Walls]

How about a simple 1X2 stick. Well that would just be too easy :D


Why not put both vertical and horizontal t track in the table? Funny you should mention that, Since that's probably what I'll end up doing.

I have also decided to make a new table for the saw & off-set the table more to the left-hand side. Mounting the table further to the left will also give me more area to clamp items down.

[Doug Walls]

How about a simple 1X2 stick. Round one end a bit, put a dowel in the middle somewhere, drill a hole in the table, so the stick is close to the blade. Here's a pic of the type of shape I'm looking to cut, It would need to be held in-place pretty good to safely make the cut.
358326
The parts are for a octagon flower pot, There are 8 pieces per layer & & 7 or 8 layers per pot.
I'm looking to make 4 or more of these, So there's a ton of cuts involved.

I made the first one a few years ago using a tenoning jig & a 12" table saw, But I sold the table saw & currently only have the RAS.
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Doug

[Ted Reischl]

That looks like 45 degree miter cuts, which would make sense if you are building an octagon shape.

How come the parts are small to begin with? On a RAS you can just flip flop an entire board over with an angled end stop to make those cuts. The only time it gets dangerous is when you get to the end of the board and a simple lever type clamp will solve that issue.

I dunno, I never clamp anything down on my RAS, then again I do not try to make angled cuts on short boards. If the board is short it is a better candidate for a TS.

[Rick Potter]

Gotta go along with Ted on this one. Angle the blade to the right, flip the board over and over, and just quit when you are down to an uncomfortable length.

Also agree, the RAS is not difficult for holding work. When I get down to really short ends, I use a foot long dowel with a crutch tip to hold it with my left hand, while pulling the saw with the right. Neither hand is anywhere near the blade.

On the other hand, if you feel uncomfortable about doing this...how about a simple wooden bracket, installed behind the fence, overhanging it to the left of the blade, with a straight line clamp on it to push straight down. I keep mentioning the left side, because in 40 years, I have never angled the RAS blade that direction, always to the right, which keeps it further away from your hand.

[Doug Walls]

That looks like 45 degree miter cuts, which would make sense if you are building an octagon shape. Yeah they're just 45 degree cuts using standard 2" X 4" lumber, then I cut a 3/4" deep 45 degree half-lap joint on each end (opposite of each other)


How come the parts are small to begin with? On a RAS you can just flip flop an entire board over with an angled end stop to make those cuts. I rough-cut the 2" X 4" stock with the flip-flop method as you mentioned on a miter saw, Then I trued them up on the table saw using a Incra miter gauge.

I didn't have a digital camera when I made the first one, So I don't have any pictures of the assembly process. I did save a few try-out pieces to refresh my memory if I wanted to make another one. I highlighted 3 pieces of one layer to hopefully explain the outer edge, Note the inside shows the plain 2" X 4" stock finish.
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Doug

[Bob Pellerin]

Too late to chime in?

I added a t-track to the left of the cut by a few inches - just enough to have the star knob clear
the blade guard. I was going to add another track parallel to the fence, but
the one track parallel to the cut location worked fine.

The top of the track
is flush to the 1/4" plywood pieces left and right of the track.

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[Doug Walls]

Too late to chime in?
As a mater of fact No, Your just in time!

I decided to rebuild the top while I'm at it & I'm just getting ready to layout the dado's needed to recess the "T" track.

I'm pretty sure I'll end up going with both options, Parallel to the blade & parallel to the fence.

Doug

[Doug Walls]

I added a t-track to the left of the cut by a few inches - just enough to have the star knob clear the blade guard.

I like your version of setting up a 45 degree cut to the right-hand side of the table & just leaving the arm at 90 degrees! How do you fasten the back side of the 45 degree fence to the table?

Doug

[Bob Pellerin]

Clamps. I replaced the normal fence with short pieces centered at the table clamps for the room to shift the fixture into position.

I was setting up to cut slots across plastic trim for gable end vents. The part I was cutting is trapped between fences and the gap front to back is the width of the slot. Dust collection was on the wrong side once the saw head was tipped over, so I kept the vacuum busy after each cut. I used in indexing block after each cut to move the right side of the fixture and the part along the left hand fence.

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[Doug Walls]

Clamps. I replaced the normal fence with short pieces centered at the table clamps for the room to shift the fixture into position.

Thanks for the info!

The parts I will be making for my flower pots will need a 45 degree half-lap joints & seeing that I won't be cutting all-the-way through the 45 degree fence, Your 45 degree fence set-up should work out good for me.

That gives me a few more ideas :cool:

Doug

[Doug Walls]

Got the "T" track installed over the weekend using my router & a DIY dado jig.
I ended up using some of Woodpeckers double T-track since I happened to have it on-hand from a old router table build.

Still have several things to finish up on it! Going to add some red oak edge trim & a new rear fence clamping system. Also need to make a new fence / dust collection system since this new table is 48" wide & the old one was only 40" wide.

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Doug

[Doug Walls]

Finally got everything finished up, Including the dust collection shute.

I also added a combo miter/t-track to the front, I plan to make a jig that will slide in the miter track so I can square-up uneven stock.

Doug

[Bill Berklich]

Doug.....I modified mine like this.... I milled a T slot in the fence and only use it for positioning a stop, but would be very easy to make the hold-downs you require....

I like the dust collection. My RAS really needs to be up graded.

[Doug Walls]

I like the dust collection.
Yeah it works ok for straight cuts, But doesn't help much on rip cuts!
I'm still working on a simple design that can be easily adjusted for different cuts.

I also need to add a separate small vacuum extension hose & blast gate to the system to use for cleaning out the "T" tracks! The "T" tracks are a nice addition, But they tend to get filled with sawdust especially on rip cuts.

Doug

[Rick Potter]

Hey Doug,

Now that you have used it a while, anything you would do different? Is it working out like you hoped?

[Doug Walls]

Now that you have used it a while, anything you would do different?
I never thought I would say this! But I've actually used this RAS more for ripping now with the T-track added. :)
I used it to clean-uo & square-up some rough cut pallet lumber & I was able to cut some pretty thin slices off the boards.

Not part of the T-track set-up, But another nice feature on the replacement for the "Recalled" guard is the riving knife/splitter addition.

It was probably overkill to use the double T-Track & the short front to back strips, But seeing that I already had them I figured why not.

[Doug Walls]

Is it working out like you hoped?
Yeah other than being a little bit of a hassle cleaning out the sawdust from the T-tracks, It's worked out really good. The T-tracks really come in handy for clamping short pieces in place!

Another aspect that I've found useful is with the stock being held down to the table, I can now safely push the blade into the board like using a sliding miter saw. Using a normal RAS in this manner the blade can grab & lift the piece of wood causing it to jam or even fly back at you.

With the stock clamped to the table & using the blade pushed into the stock method described above, I cut the lap-joints shown in pic# 3 above. The cuts were made at full depth (a little over 1" deep) with a 3/4" wide Freud stack dado set.

Doug

[Rick Potter]

Thanks Doug.I appreciate the info.

[Bill Warwick]

378627
I am in the middle of rebuilding my ras.. I added a few rows of buried threaded inserts for ability to add/ remove tracks, jigs, stops, whatever..

[Phillip Gregory]

I'm looking to make a bunch of angled & mitered dado cuts on my RAS & some of the pieces will be fairly short under 6".
I'm planning on adding some "T" track to my saw's table so I can use hold downs to keep the pieces in-place.

Putting anything besides sacrificial top on the top of the table limits your ability to cut angles because once you move your saw out of 90 degree crosscut you probably will cut whatever else you put on your table. You would have to use a "broken" (not extending the full width of the table) fence as Bob Pellerin did to cut angles. You would use an angled guide such as Andy Besette did against the fence that stops just to the left of your blade to make an angled cut.


Yes, it works very well....The only time dust gets on the table is when shaving
a little material off the end of a piece....

Do you dado with your saw? Mine has decent dust collection with crosscuts, even with just shaving a fuzz off the end, but even with 2 4" ports connected to a 2300 cfm dust collector dadoing makes so much dust and chips it still blows quite a bit out and around the dust collection hood.

[Roy Turbett]

I experimented with an aluminum T-track but found I could accomplish the same thing by using a slot cutting bit to put what amounts to a T-track in the 3/4" MDF sacrificial top. Use it all the time for jigs and featherboards.

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[Phillip Gregory]

Nice clean and complete saw! I don't think mine had paint that looked that good since the '60s, mine is missing the rip pawl (but with a seized yoke rotation stop bolt, I couldn't rip if I wanted to), and mine also has an obviously but not badly made shop-made end cap, which fortunately contains the start/stop pushbuttons which in completely OSHA-violating fashion operate at full line voltage.

[Roy Turbett]

I also added a paddle style switch under the table so I can turn the saw off with my knee. If you look close, you can also see two threaded rods that run from the rear table to the front so I can loosen the fence from the front of the table. I use the dowel jig as a stop block.

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[Doug Walls]

Do you dado with your saw? Yeah as stated in post #25 above I cut the lap-joints shown in pic# 3 above. The cuts were made at full depth (a little over 1" deep) with a 3/4" wide Freud stack dado set.


You would use an angled guide such as Andy Besette did against the fence that stops just to the left of your blade to make an angled cut. I have done something like that several times now & it works pretty good! The angled sub-fence pieces are held in-place with clamps & the table's T-tracks, But I'm probably going to still add some T-track to the sub-fence angles to help better hold the stock in-place.

Doug

[Warren Lake]

had a sears at the beginning and did a few things with it. Then mostly for cross cutting rough lumber. It was pretty lousey for that, under powered and it kicked out a heat sensor reset thing then have to wait for some period of time and press the button for it to come to life again, My skill saw has more balls than that saw had.

[James Jayko]

Seems like a good opportunity to buy literally any miter saw.

[Doug Walls]

had a sears at the beginning and did a few things with it. Then mostly for cross cutting rough lumber.
Yeah I've heard that from several others also!

In my case the 10" Craftsman I have cuts really good & surprisingly stays squared & lined-up pretty well!

It's kind of ironic since I originally planned to use this 10" Craftsman just as a prototype machine to test out my "T" track table ideas & then use that design on a older Dewalt. After using the Craftsman for awhile now, I'm really happy with it & I'm not in any hurry to start on the Dewalt.

My final table/fence design will be used on a 12" Dewalt T-1533 with a 2hp. 3-phase motor. The Dewalt is currently disassembled & waiting to be rebuilt & reassembled once I decide on a top/fence design.

Doug

[Doug Walls]

I added a sliding top to my RAS!
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?266995-Sliding-Table-For-RAS


Doug