Simon Heslop's table saw

Simon Heslop writes:

Hi Matthias,

You might find this interesting. I've built a table saw based heavily on the one you built recently. I've attached some photos as well as a somewhat crude SketchUp model.

Even though you said it's probably not worth building a saw like this, I thought it'd be ideal for my small garage (the photo makes it look bigger than it is — I have trouble moving around the place) as I could incorporate it into the existing workbench, retracting the blade below the surface when not in use. I'm also not sure how much use I'd get out of a table saw to justify buying one and rearranging the garage to fit it.

I built it with (what I'd consider to be) a minimum of tools, all of which are pretty much the cheapest and lowest quality of their kind available. The bandsaw is as fancy as it got. I bought it second hand at a car boot sale for £20 and thought I'd really wasted my money until I got a new blade for it, but it still leaves a fairly wobbly and off-square cut. The cover is off to show off the cheap construction. All of the stuff I cut with it I could've cut with the jigsaw though.

I stuck pretty close to how you made yours for the most part. Although I secured the motor by drilling through the guard plate, and relying on a tight fit (traced from solder wire, a trick I found on Cosmas Bauer's YouTube channel) in the back.

I also glued the extra pieces to the depth pivot when I found out my 16mm Forstner bit was cutting a bit oversized and making a loose fit. By drilling the holes in the extra bits first, I could clamp them on in such a way as to make for a snug enough fit with the steel bar.

I flattened and squared up a piece of 2x4 for the fence with an old trick you've probably seen before, using a router sled sliding on two rails. I made securing the wood down more awkward than it needed to be though, since I was trying to avoid drilling any unnecessary holes in the sheet of birch plywood I was using as a flat reference. That plywood was dang expensive.

I simplified the fence rail a fair bit too. Since the bench the saw is going on has support on all four sides, I didn't think I needed the extra strength of a full rail. I also didn't feel confident my partially finished table saw would cut accurately enough to make a decent one.

The saw still isn't quite finished though. I've got to get everything better aligned, as well as figure out how to fix the wobble on the arbour. I do own a small metal lathe so that gives me options.

The reason I didn't use the metal lathe to make a fancier table saw in the first place is just that I've found it difficult to source powerful enough motors without spending a lot of money.

Thanks, Simon Heslop

Matthias adds:

Simon Heslop also has a YouTube channel, well worth checking out. I convinced him to make a short video about this saw as well. His other videos are much more elaborate, but Simon figured the construction of a homemade table saw was already well covered by my video series about my table saw.

More machines by Simon Heslop:

Oscillating spindle sander