J.R. Rutter
11-04-2007, 11:39 AM
Since I have a cabinet door business, I've had my eye on a straight line rip saw for a couple of years now. But being an, ehem, frugal guy, I couldn't quite pull the trigger on a new one. At AWFS, I looked a a few options, including an Extrema XR-12C, which was the only saw that I opted to get a quote on.
If you have never seen one, a straight line rip saw has a caterpillar track built into the base. The blade is above the table (on this model anyway) and there are pressure rollers to hold the wood against the cat track. The wood gets pulled through in a straight line good enough for gluing.
But with the recent wide belt and big compressor purchases, not to mention the cost to hook them up, I figured that a saw would have to wait. I have been running an old Powermatic 66 with 4-wheel feeder for close to two years. While it doesn't exactly cut straight, it does do a decent job of reducing time and avoiding eating sawdust when ripping a few hundred BF of wood.
Then I happened to see an ebay auction for the same saw that I got quoted in Vegas. I exchanged some e-mails with the seller, but didn't bid above my starting bid. Well it turned out that the winner flaked out on closing the deal, so the seller called me up and offered it to me for less than the original opening bid.
We got it into place on Friday, and I spent an hour or so today getting it connected to the DC. Long story short, now I know why everyone has been encouraging me to get one of these things. The catalog lit talks about virtually invisible saw marks, which I assumed was typical exaggeration. But when I put the first board through and held it up towards the light, sure enough, I guess you can maybe just barely see some tooth marks... Wow, it is amazing what a good feed system and massive arbor with widely spaced bearings can do. At 15 HP, you can really move things through without a hiccup. We'll be experimenting to see if we can eliminate most edge jointing and secondary (finish) ripping. From the initial test, the finish is at least as good as the edge jointer.
As a bonus, it came with a laser and half of a ProScale setup. I happen to have an extra display, so I just need to fabricate a bracket to mount to the fence. My first run at a scrap management cart is tucked in beside the saw. The double vertical conduit will act as a guide for a 12" Sawzall blade to crosscut the strips into kindling, which gets bagged or boxed.
So here is the new saw, along with the old saw that it replaced.
If you have never seen one, a straight line rip saw has a caterpillar track built into the base. The blade is above the table (on this model anyway) and there are pressure rollers to hold the wood against the cat track. The wood gets pulled through in a straight line good enough for gluing.
But with the recent wide belt and big compressor purchases, not to mention the cost to hook them up, I figured that a saw would have to wait. I have been running an old Powermatic 66 with 4-wheel feeder for close to two years. While it doesn't exactly cut straight, it does do a decent job of reducing time and avoiding eating sawdust when ripping a few hundred BF of wood.
Then I happened to see an ebay auction for the same saw that I got quoted in Vegas. I exchanged some e-mails with the seller, but didn't bid above my starting bid. Well it turned out that the winner flaked out on closing the deal, so the seller called me up and offered it to me for less than the original opening bid.
We got it into place on Friday, and I spent an hour or so today getting it connected to the DC. Long story short, now I know why everyone has been encouraging me to get one of these things. The catalog lit talks about virtually invisible saw marks, which I assumed was typical exaggeration. But when I put the first board through and held it up towards the light, sure enough, I guess you can maybe just barely see some tooth marks... Wow, it is amazing what a good feed system and massive arbor with widely spaced bearings can do. At 15 HP, you can really move things through without a hiccup. We'll be experimenting to see if we can eliminate most edge jointing and secondary (finish) ripping. From the initial test, the finish is at least as good as the edge jointer.
As a bonus, it came with a laser and half of a ProScale setup. I happen to have an extra display, so I just need to fabricate a bracket to mount to the fence. My first run at a scrap management cart is tucked in beside the saw. The double vertical conduit will act as a guide for a 12" Sawzall blade to crosscut the strips into kindling, which gets bagged or boxed.
So here is the new saw, along with the old saw that it replaced.