Saturday was a good day. I talked to my Dad the night before, and we set a “play date” for Saturday. I needed to head out to Mars Lumber to pick up some walnut for a few projects. I also decided that it would be a good day to work on getting the rest of the machines that I had recently purchased put together, and it would be a good day to move the tablesaw from my parents’ basement to our basement. I picked up my Dad at around 9:30 Saturday morning, and we headed towards Mars. We picked up 25 board feet of walnut, loaded it into the car, and headed back south on Route 8 again. We were headed towards Saw Sales, a local woodworking and machinery supplier. I needed to get another saw blade, since I had decided to leave my Freud thin-kerf combination on my old saw that was going to live in my parents’ basement–I wanted to make sure that there was a decent blade on that saw. I had read good things about Amana blades, they were a good bit cheaper than the Freud or Forrest equivalents, and Saw Sales was an Amana dealer. We got there shortly before they closed, and we left with some dust collection accessories and a nice Amana full-kerf combination blade. Then we got lunch at a nearby establishment, including some to-go for Jenny back at home, and we headed to my house to unload the lumber.
After getting the lumber stacked in the basement, we did a quick disassembly of my old saw, and loaded that into the car. Then we went up to my parents’ house to move that saw into the basement, and disassemble their old saw to move it down to our house. That old Craftsman contractor’s saw is a beast to move, but that is just more indication of how solid it really is. It’s a well-made saw. We managed to get all of those parts into the car, and headed back down to our house to unload it and get it into the basement. Before we left, we used some compressed air to clean out the motor and parts of the cabinet, which should help things a bit. Getting it into the basement wasn’t too hard–there’s enough room getting into our basement that my Dad and I could team-carry it, which helped a lot.
First on the agenda, after getting the saw and all of its parts moved downstairs, was to get the cosmolene (a protectant used on cast iron) off of the jointer top. I had a can of WD-40 in my parents’ basement that I grabbed, which does a good job of removing the stuff. I put my Dad to work doing that, while I worked on assembling the mobile base for the jointer. Once he was finished with that, I put the assembled jointer base on the mobile base, and rolled it over to where we had the jointer top. This is a large piece of cast iron, and was pretty heavy, so we team-lifted it into position on the jointer base. A few bolts to put it together, and we could roll it back over to the power tool area of the shop for final assembly. We finished assembling that, gave it a quick test, then wheeled it out of the way temporarily.
I can’t remember if we did the saw or dust collector next, but I think it was the dust collector. This was a bit of a pain to assemble, as the instructions didn’t entirely match the hardware. There were enough of all of the parts to get it together, though, which was cool. We ran into a bit of trouble when it came to the upper bag support–it didn’t clear the floor joists for the floor above! Argh! I was worried about this. It can work without the upper bag support, but it helps a lot to have it there. I had decided that it was going to live in the corner of the shop most of the time anyway, as I had enough 4″ flexible duct to connect it to any machine in the power tool area without moving it. So, after my dad and I removed an old 2×4-and-plywood platform that had been used to hold some stuff up off of the floor (it was quite the rotted piece of trash), and a few pieces of wood that had been left to rot there on the floor for probably 40 years or more, we wheeled the dust collector into its corner, and found that the bag support just fit in the space between two joists, and with the system in a position where it was useful. Whew! We fired it up for a quick test, and boy, does it ever suck. That’s a good thing, of course. 
Finally, we assembled the saw onto its base. First I measured-out the “dust fall” opening for underneath the saw, and I had my Dad cut that out with the jigsaw. Then we bolted the saw to the stand, re-assembled the motor, and installed the new blade. Of course, there were a few hiccups along the way (bolt holes for the saw worked out to be just on the right side of a divider built-into the new saw base cabinet, which meant that we had to enlarge the holes slightly so that we had clearance for the nuts and a wrench to tighten them). We tried a few test cuts, and were getting constant kick-back off of the blade at the end of a crosscut. A little bit of checking showed that the trunnions had probably moved just slightly during the move, which was making the blade less than parallel to the miter slots. This was adjusted, and now it looks like we’re good to go.
With that, we cleaned up, turned off the lights, and I took my tired Dad home. Then I took my tired self and had a long, hot shower, followed by some ibuprofen and sleep.
Yesterday, after dinner, I went down into the shop to do a little bit of work. This is the first time I’ve actually been able to use all of the new tools for real work, so it was pretty cool. I’m building a gift for a recently-married couple who are friends of ours, and I’m using a bit of the walnut to do it. That meant that I had a chance to use the jointer (first time with a jointer in the shop, and holy cow, this is so much easier than trying to do it with the planer and tablesaw and sleds and jigs), the planer, the dust collector with both of those, the tablesaw, and the jigsaw, all for a little project. It was completely awesome. This walnut is beautiful, too, so I can’t wait to make some other things from it.
That’s about all for now. I’ll have pictures of this little project I’m working on when I’m finished. It’s not all that fancy, but I think it’s a neat little gift.
jonathan
