Timothy Weed
08-18-2008, 2:36 PM
I'm between jobs right now and I've been "pretending" to be a woodworker for awhile even though all I have is a few hand and portable power tools. Last week I finally got fed up with saying "I hate this thing" every time I picked up a tool. (My main workhorse was actually a rotozip. Need I say more?) So I spent the better part of the week reading everything I could find on table saws, band saws, routers etc.
From my research, I had pretty much made up my mind to go with the Ridgid TS3650. However, this weekend I went to the local Rockler to look at their router table hardware and I ended up walking away with a Delta 36-978 on manager's blow out for $400 including fence. I was already starting to regret it before I even got home, partly because I had done all the research on one item and then bought something else which is never a good idea, but mainly because the price tag on the box said $589.99 and I began to wonder what was so bad about this thing that they slapped a just-get-it-out-of-my-sight sticker on it. I've been afraid to read any reviews on it because I don't really want to hear how much people hate it before I've even put it together. But my previous research seemed to indicate that Delta was a solidly mediocre brand. Not great, not trash.
As far as assembly goes, I'm not sure what I was expecting but I was dismayed by the estimated 4-6 hour assembly time. The instructions are a curious mix of the astute "Make sure the short panels are opposite each other and the long panels are opposite each other," and my favorite: "Using a straight edge, align the motor pulley with the arbor pulley in the saw cabinet." Now, I don't have a lot of experience with this type of thing but I somehow felt like this was perhaps the single most important step in the whole manual, yet they did not even bother to include a picture, leaving me to scratch my head thinking, "And I get my straight edge in there how exactly?" Eventually, I discovered that if you crank the blade tilt wheel way over it gives you a lot more room to see what is going on inside of the cabinet. By the way, the manual said nothing what-so-ever about ensuring that the motor shaft was parallel to the arbor, which again I'm assuming is reasonably important and was also far from easy since the motor mount was designed with about a half an inch of adjustment in any direction for each bolt. That step alone took about 45 minutes of trying to support the motor with my knee while I alternately loosened and tightened the bolts while checking the whole set up with the straight edge. I'm sure there's an easier way to do all of that and maybe the belt is more forgiving of a slight misalignment than I give it credit for but you can't have too much accuracy can you?
At that point I was already at the 6 1/2 hour mark and decided to call it a day. My favorite part of the whole operation was when the manual said to assemble the whole thing upside down and then flip it over with a MINIMUM of two people. Well, I immediately thought "Nuts to that" and assembled the it in the bed of my truck and then slowly rolled it over the edge so that the legs were on the ground. Which I admit had a rather high potential of going horribly wrong, but in fact went off without a hitch.
I realize this is pretty long for my first post but I wanted to share my experience and figured this forum was the best place to find people who care about such things.
From my research, I had pretty much made up my mind to go with the Ridgid TS3650. However, this weekend I went to the local Rockler to look at their router table hardware and I ended up walking away with a Delta 36-978 on manager's blow out for $400 including fence. I was already starting to regret it before I even got home, partly because I had done all the research on one item and then bought something else which is never a good idea, but mainly because the price tag on the box said $589.99 and I began to wonder what was so bad about this thing that they slapped a just-get-it-out-of-my-sight sticker on it. I've been afraid to read any reviews on it because I don't really want to hear how much people hate it before I've even put it together. But my previous research seemed to indicate that Delta was a solidly mediocre brand. Not great, not trash.
As far as assembly goes, I'm not sure what I was expecting but I was dismayed by the estimated 4-6 hour assembly time. The instructions are a curious mix of the astute "Make sure the short panels are opposite each other and the long panels are opposite each other," and my favorite: "Using a straight edge, align the motor pulley with the arbor pulley in the saw cabinet." Now, I don't have a lot of experience with this type of thing but I somehow felt like this was perhaps the single most important step in the whole manual, yet they did not even bother to include a picture, leaving me to scratch my head thinking, "And I get my straight edge in there how exactly?" Eventually, I discovered that if you crank the blade tilt wheel way over it gives you a lot more room to see what is going on inside of the cabinet. By the way, the manual said nothing what-so-ever about ensuring that the motor shaft was parallel to the arbor, which again I'm assuming is reasonably important and was also far from easy since the motor mount was designed with about a half an inch of adjustment in any direction for each bolt. That step alone took about 45 minutes of trying to support the motor with my knee while I alternately loosened and tightened the bolts while checking the whole set up with the straight edge. I'm sure there's an easier way to do all of that and maybe the belt is more forgiving of a slight misalignment than I give it credit for but you can't have too much accuracy can you?
At that point I was already at the 6 1/2 hour mark and decided to call it a day. My favorite part of the whole operation was when the manual said to assemble the whole thing upside down and then flip it over with a MINIMUM of two people. Well, I immediately thought "Nuts to that" and assembled the it in the bed of my truck and then slowly rolled it over the edge so that the legs were on the ground. Which I admit had a rather high potential of going horribly wrong, but in fact went off without a hitch.
I realize this is pretty long for my first post but I wanted to share my experience and figured this forum was the best place to find people who care about such things.