Used vs. new tablesaws?

[Paul McGaha]

I clicked "Buy New" but, this is not a question others can answer for you. If you are not interested in the newer features aimed at safety and don't mind certifying for yourself that the machine is in proper working order you can save a bundle buying used. Unlike some other replies, I place a high value on a riving knife. SawStop is a great idea but, for western saws, the return to the RK is a good thing.

I make furniture and don't deal with much in the way of sheetgoods. Small or intricate cuts offer all sorts of chances for things to go south behind the blade and a riving knife minimizes this. Perfect? No, but way better than just a splitter. BTW, I don't have a RK but, my next saw will ;-).

If you want a riving knife, a guard that you might actually use or "flesh sensing technology", new will be a logical choice. As for modern conveniences, most of these can be shop made or after-market acquired; decent fence, decent miter gauge, modern belts and bearings, etc. As usual, JMHO.

Glenn,

What do you think your next saw will be?

PHM

[Gary Muto]

I clicked "Buy New" but, this is not a question others can answer for you. If you are not interested in the newer features aimed at safety and don't mind certifying for yourself that the machine is in proper working order you can save a bundle buying used. Unlike some other replies, I place a high value on a riving knife. SawStop is a great idea but, for western saws, the return to the RK is a good thing.

I make furniture and don't deal with much in the way of sheetgoods. Small or intricate cuts offer all sorts of chances for things to go south behind the blade and a riving knife minimizes this. Perfect? No, but way better than just a splitter. BTW, I don't have a RK but, my next saw will ;-).

If you want a riving knife, a guard that you might actually use or "flesh sensing technology", new will be a logical choice. As for modern conveniences, most of these can be shop made or after-market acquired; decent fence, decent miter gauge, modern belts and bearings, etc. As usual, JMHO.

Glenn said what I was trying to say... only better. My next saw will have a riving knife too. Maybe a SS maybe a slider. it's probably going to be while though.

[Pat Barry]

"Why buy new when slightly used will do, except when the deals are this great!"
Dick Enrico

[Phillip Gregory]

I ended up getting a new saw due to the absolute dearth of reasonable used equipment within a reasonable driving distance. There were a total of three tablesaws within 100 miles in eBay/CL/regional classifieds that weren't cheap benchtop or contractor saws. One was a nice 3 hp Jet Xacta Saw that the owner never returned any messages on. The other two were European sliders, a smaller but very worn-looking Robland and a giant 10' table SCM, both 3 ph/50 Hz machines with 30 mm arbors, of course. A local equipment/woodworking shop just started to carry Shop Fox and General International equipment to replace the Deltas they had given up trying to sell. They also sell Jet, Saw Stop, and Powermatic but those were a bit out of my price range. I ended up getting the Shop Fox equivalent to the Grizzly G0691 (W1820) since they had it for roughly what I would have paid Grizzly to ship a G0691 to my door, plus not having to deal with the whole shipping part that a lot of you guys have lamented about. I figured the extra table size for a marginal price over the G0690/W1819 would be an asset. I pulled around to the truck dock, the shop's forklift carefully set a pristine box bolted to a pallet into my truck bed and that was that. I did strap my boxes in the truck after reading a cautionary tale here about a flying saw.

The first impression of the saw is that there is a lot of iron in it. It is very heavy and required me to remove the table and motor from the cabinet before I could use the appliance dolly and ramps to move it. The cabinet + trunnion assembly probably still weighed over 200 pounds even with the table off and the motor out. Fortunately the manual is good and the saw was pretty simple to disassemble, reassemble, and get aligned. They even provided all of the metric tools necessary to assemble the saw. They were in the last box I opened along with the saw guard (the last part to get installed), so of course I had to dig out my metric sockets and hex keys and finished getting the saw assembled before I found them. A few hours with a square, a ruler, those metric tools, and a WD-40 soaked rag and it was ready to go. I did take some advice from you guys here and put a coat of paste wax on the cast tables. It made my shop smell like vanilla but really does help things move along nicely and hopefully will keep the tables from rusting. I made a few cuts on scrap wood including some rips and dadoes just to make sure everything works as it should. It sure does work nicely. I didn't have a nickel to do the nickel test but it ran very smooth, much smoother than the contractor and bench saws I had used before.

100_3730.jpg

Here's a picture my wife took of the saw and apparently of my back as well. I was in the process of swapping the riving knife out for the guard after finishing cutting a dado in a piece of scrap wood after having swapped the 40T blade out for an 80T Freud crosscut blade (very nice blade by the way.) That's why the blade is all the way up without the guard on and why I am bent over in case you were wondering.

[Gordon Eyre]

That is a nice looking saw and should give you years is service. My advice is take normal precautions but don't be afraid of your saw. Healthy respect is much better.

[Eric DeSilva]

I think about a new saw on and off. I bought used to start with--a late model Delta Unisaw for $700 with a 50" Bies fence and a bunch of other accessories seemed too good to pass up, and I could probably sell it today for what I paid for it. If I did buy new, I'd probably look at the Sawstop, but I would have a real hard time spending $3K on one of those when the Hammer K3 is $3K as well. Moving to either a slider or flesh sensing technology strikes me as increasing the safety margin. But that is a big investment.

Matt, I know you just bought a Sawstop--did you look at the Hammers? I haven't researched extensively, but I'm curious about your decision process.

[Matt Meiser]

I didn't even look and really know nothing about them. My decision was purely based on the safety factor. I no longer use my TS for processing panels and I'm finding that my Kapex makes a fine crosscutter so the slider wouldn't really provide any advantage and I still don't see a safety argument for ripping operations on a small slider after reading the recent thread.