A Very Tidy Circular Saw Bench

July 4, 2016 by Jenny List 16 Comments

If your parents had a workshop as you grew up, the chances are it harbored some tools you came to know and love as you used them for your formative projects. Our reader [Joerg]’s father for instance has a circular saw bench that [Joerg] sorely misses, now living over 500km away. Our subject today is his response to this problem, now needing to cut aluminium he set about creating a saw bench of his own, and the result is a rather nice build.

He put together a variety of CAD models to formulate his ideas, and arrived at a structure in 18mm waterproof plywood with moving table linear bearings. The saw blade itself was mounted on a 5mm aluminum plate, though he doesn’t tell us what motor it uses. All the wooden parts came from a single sheet of plywood, and the result is a very tidy creation indeed.

Power saws are among the more hazardous tools in your workshop arsenal, whatever their type. If this was a commercial saw it would probably have a guard over the top of its blade, but even without that its sturdy construction and relatively low profile blade make this one stand above some of the more basic home-made saws we’ve seen. Building a power saw is something you have to take seriously.

We’ve featured quite a few home-made saws over the years. At least one other large table saw, a rather powerful but surprisingly tiny saw bench, this scroll saw using a sewing machine mechanism, or how about this simple jigsaw table?

Circular Saw + Innovative Fence = Unique DIY Table Saw

September 17, 2015 by Dan Maloney 26 Comments

A table saw is often the first machine the aspiring woodworker wants for the shop. But even a lightweight contractor’s saw is not cheap, and a really good cabinet saw is both expensive and incredibly heavy. And any table saw is an intimidating machine that can liberate your fingers from your hand in a trice. Looking for a solution to all of these problems, [Seumas] has come up with a unique table saw conversion for a circular saw that improves safety and lowers the barrier to table saw ownership.

Flipping a low-cost circular saw upside down and attaching it to a table is old hat – we’ve seen plenty of examples of that before, including this recent post. Where [Seumas]’s idea shines is in the integration of the fence and the table. A typical fence needs to stay perfectly parallel to the blade while being dead square to the table, but still needs to be moved to adjust the width of cut. In [Seumas]’s design, the fence is fixed to the table, and the whole table slides left and right on high-pressure laminate rails. In theory, the fence will never go out of true, and the width of cut can be a lot wider than the typical table saw – an impressive 3 feet to the right of the blade.

As for safety, [Seumas] shows off quite a selection of DIY attachments in the video after the break. He builds his own Lexan blade guard, anti-kickback pawls, and stock hold-downs. Add in the little touches like shop-made clamps for locking the table, extending outfeed support, and built-in dust collection, and you can make yourself a pretty capable machine at the fraction of the cost of buying.

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Homemade Table Saw Starts With Circular Saw

May 31, 2015 by Rich Bremer 28 Comments

How often do us tinkerers go out into our basement/garage shop and don’t have the correct tool for the job? Most would say it happens more often than they would prefer. One option would be to buy the tool, but it is always more fun to build what you need! [kadambi] was in need of a table saw and decided to build his own.

He’s using a circular saw as his starting point but this isn’t just any old circular saw. This one has a riving knife that prevents work piece kickback and human contact with the back of the spinning blade. The saw is mounted upside-down to a wooden table that is supported by a wooden box frame. The boxy frame has another function, it acts as a dust collector. A vacuum is ported into the box frame creating a low pressure condition and most of the sawdust is sucked into (and settles on) the bottom of the box. Only a small amount of dust makes its way into the vacuum, preventing otherwise inevitable filter clogs. Out front is an industrial on/off switch as well as a separate e-stop switch.

[kadambi] has done some test cuts and is happy with his saw’s performance. If you’re interested in more DIY table saws, check out this mini saw or feature-filled one.

Miter Saw Stop Saves Time And Aggravation

June 19, 2014 by Rich Bremer 26 Comments

V Wheel Adjustable Miter Saw Stop

Miter saws are great tools for cutting pieces of wood at a variety of angles. If you have ever cut a really long piece on a miter saw there is no doubt you’ve either propped up the extended end on a pile of scrap wood or asked someone to hold the dangling piece so you could get an accurate cut. Doing either is a little hokey and is a general pain in the butt.

[Kram242] started a project that could eliminate these problems and also provides a solution to consistent length cuts of multiple pieces. It’s an adjustable stop that is sure to make miter saw cuts much less annoying.

The rig is extremely simple and consists of a piece of aluminum extrusion, v-wheel carriage and lever-actuated clamp. The movable carriage lets the operator quickly position the stop to ensure the wood is cut at the appropriate location. This stop also makes it easy to cut several pieces of wood to the exact same length.

If we had to make any suggestions for improvements it would be to add supports to the carriage that emulate the saw bed and backstop as well as an adhesive measuring tape guide.

V Wheel Adjustable Miter Saw Stop

Scrappy Lil’ Circular Saw

February 20, 2014 by Kristina Panos 22 Comments

Like a lot of us, [Andrea] has a habit of disassembling everything he runs into. He recently came across a fairly substantial motor he’d salvaged and envisioned its new life as a small circular saw.

[Andrea] bought new cutting discs, but the rest is salvage and scrap. He had already mounted the motor, pivot, belt, and gear to a wood block, so he added two more wood scraps for a base and a cutting surface. He screwed a metal L beam to one side of the surface block to keep the disc adjacent to the edge. A couple of washers keep the disc rotating freely. [Andrea] used a piece of hydraulic pipe and a cylindrical nut to attach the disc to the pivot. This assembly can be easily tightened by hand, so changing discs is a quick operation.

He kept the electrical as-is and mounted the box to the saw body. This 30W motor runs at ~600-1000RPM which isn’t fast enough to cut wood. Undeterred, [Andrea] plans to use it to cut steel bolts, copper circuit boards, and metal plates. If you need to cut through anything and everything, try this 700W DIY table saw.

Circular Saw To Table Saw Conversion

October 19, 2013 by James Hobson 90 Comments

Corded circular saws are a dime-a-dozen at any old thrift store, yet table saws are a bit more of a costly investment — have you ever wondered if you could just make one out of a circular saw? [Matthias Wandel] did, and he just so happens to be very good at woodworking! He makes a lot of great woodworking videos to share on YouTube, and in his latest blog post, he shows us a rather elaborate way to convert a plain old circular saw, into a functional table saw.

While the concept seems simple, unless you do a lot of woodworking, you’ll probably marvel at how easily making things comes to [Matthias] — we know we did. By the end of the video he has a fully functional table saw that can raise and lower in height, and cut at different angles.

If you’re interested in making one yourself, he does a very thorough job explaining the process in his video — check it out after the break!

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