I picked this up off of the Craig's list, up in this nice little retirement village called Sun City.
Not the best shot I know, and if anything it just shows how much I need to clean up my shop.
Either way, this is a DeWalt radial arm saw from the 50s. Still operational and pretty well maintained. There were a bunch of accessories that went along with this saw and I am sure my wallet is going to hate me for trying to find them.
The plan is to mount it next to the swing saw. Though I wager that this will end up being more of the workhorse since the swing saw is pretty much just for 90 degree cuts on 2x material.
So I'll get some better shots and draw up some plans for the mounting structure for the saw. Stay tuned.
Continuation
So the new 2×4 you see there in the center is where it's going. I took a measurement from that point and went to both sides 8 feet. Just to make sure I can get a full sheet ripped with a 2 foot wide rip.
So that's where it was supposed to mount, but when I got it in there I found I was a couple inches shy of the 24 inch cut. Wouldn't you know, but I had to bring it all the way out so the base was flush with the current fence. That meant a bunch more holes being drilled. I finally got it where I wanted, and I'm going to go back and replace the boards that were drilled through that ended up not needing drilled through.
But here it is now in place. I was able to shim up the front and get the arm level. That way when I build the new extension table for this I can just make sure it's level as well and be good to go.
Here is the beginning of the frame. I'll consider all of this as phase one, to be learned from when I build another table. So right here is some oak frame work that I'm starting on. I'm just mounting it to the under side of the current bench using some hinges.
More frame added. I'll be making adjustable legs so I can get it leveled since it does come out about 20 inches. I'll probably just do those out of some more oak and then add some screw adjusting feet so I can dial them in. They will need to be on hinges as well so they can fold up for when the table is down.
Here it is with the mdf sheet in place. I used a 3/4 piece here. Likely what I will do for the next one is get two sheets of 3/8 so I can have one as a replaceable top. Now I just need to get the legs done, give the top a bit of a sanding around the screws so its nice and smooth and then coat it with some polyurethane.
Like I said,don't judge the out of squareness too harshly, this is simply a test. Yes, a test.
All right, folding legs added and fed the piggy mdf half a quart of oil based polyurethane.
And you can see here its folded down. I have four spax screws drilled in there to act as clamps when the table is in place. What these do is apply pressure to the back of the spacer board which in turn clamps the fence in place. Since the area that the fence is pressed in to is square to the saw, this makes for easy changes to the fence, without having to have any fancy clamps set up.
That'd it for this entry. When I make another table I'll do a new post, but I believe this is good enough.