I’ve blogged about the restoration of a 40-year-old Craftsman table saw. After restoration and tune-up, it has been an excellent addition to my shop. Buuut…

The switch always bothered me. Craftsman put a tiny rocker-switch on the bottom of the table. Reaching under the table and feeling for the switch was always a chore and, in a panic situation, trying to shutdown was downright dangerous!

Adding a new fence with 36” to the right of blade really improved the ability of the saw, but I was always fighting the long extension with no table under it for thinner stock.

And dust collection – a perennial problem with contractor saws.

So:
1. I ordered a decent machinery switch from Grizzly. I mounted it to the far left-hand side of the fence – out of the way, easy to access. I really think the switch belongs on the left anyway – I am right-handed and tend to support stock with my right hand, leaving the left for starting. Also, in a panic situation, my right hand would probably be guiding or supporting stock and the left hand would be free to shutdown.
2. I enclosed the back of the saw and added a 2 1/2” dust port to the base of the saw for my shopvac
3. I rewired the motor and switch (still 120 VAC) with an accessory outlet to turn on the shopvac when I fired up the saw.
4. I built an extension to the table to fit between the extra length on the fence – 3/4” MDF edged in cherry and laminated with leftovers from a kitchen remodeling job years ago.

What a difference! The saw is much nicer to use now. As an added bonus, the switch seems to have improved saw performance, too! It used to dim the lights and take almost 3 seconds to run up to speed. With the new switch, it comes up to speed in less than 1/2 second and the lights barely flicker. I think the old rocker-switch was adding quite a bit of resistance to the circuit and causing the motor to draw more current. I was seriously thinking about running 220 to the garage but that seems unecessary now.

(Please ignore the messy shop in photos – there just never seems to be enough time to clean.)

Seems like a lot of woodworkers build a router table as one of their projects. I am no exception. I had seen Norm’s router table on the NYW and had planned to build one pretty much like it. I even bought the plywood and started to lay out the plans for one.

In the summer of 2007, while making the Saturday morning grocery run, I saw a sign for an estate sale and stopped to see what there was. There was a half-finished Norm router table in the basement. It was fairly complete. He hadn’t even started the drawers in the bottom but he had the drawer slides for them. The top was cut out for a Jessem router plate, but the router and plate had already been sold to someone else. He wanted $50 for it – I didn’t even haggle.

After I got it home I realized there were a few problems. The plexiglas front door was hinged poorly, so I mortised the hinges, put a knob on it and added magnetic catches to keep it closed. The bit drawers fit poorly and interfered with each other so I cleaned them up a little with a block plane. If I get real ambitious I might remake those some day. I built the lower drawers and replaced a broken knob on one bit stoarge drawer. One thing I never liked about Norm’s design was the dust collection tube that stuck directly out from the back of the cabinet. I redid that to allow the table to sit close up against the wall for storage. The fence was nothing special but servicable. Someday I may make a taller one for better control.

When I was all done, I researched router lifts. I had pretty much decided on the Jessem Rout-R-Lift FX based purely on cost. When I went to the local Woodcraft they had both the Rout-R-Lift and the Woodpecker Quick-Lift in stock and were kind enough to let me open both and inspect them. There was no comparison; the Quick-Lift was better built and the quick lift feature looked useful. I paid about $100 more for the Quick-Lift and an adapter ring for smaller routers – it was worth every penny. After a year of using it, I really like this unit.

The router I had been living with for the last 20 years was a cheap Craftsman – totally unsuitable for mounting in a router table. The power switch was mounted in the handles of the base and it would have been difficult to impossible to rewire it so I could mount it in a lift. I picked up a DeWalt 616 based on the HUGE bearing they have on the bit-side of the unit and the convenience of the power cord that unplugs from the unit right at the router. It has been a real workhorse in the last year.

A few years ago my boss offered me a wood lathe that he was going to throw out. He had bought a (much) better lathe and just wanted this one gone. I had a lot of other woodworking tools but no lathe so I was glad to have it. It came mounted on a stand made from a couple of 2X10’s that just wasn’t sturdy enough for any real lathe work so it sat in my basement for a few years while I thought about a design for a lathe stand – not high on the priority list.

Earlier this year the company I work for started renovating. Over the course of a month of dumpster-diving I found : 1. a pair of heavy cast-iron legs with leveling feet 2. sections of a large bi-fold solid core door 16” X 84” X 2” 3. lots of pieces of oak veneer plywood – already stained and finished

So this is the end result. I built a frame to hold a set of drawers under the solid-core door. It is recessed about 1/2” into the door to act more or less like a torsion box to keep it from sagging or warping while suspended between the two legs. The frame and drawer fronts were all made from the recycled oak veneer plywood. Reclaimed oak trim from a previous salvage was cut to 3/4” and milled on my table saw to finish the edges of the plywood frame.

The only purchased parts were a 2’X4’ piece of 1/2” MDF and 3 sets of drawer slides for the drawers. Note that the drawers holding lathe tools have open bottoms. This is so that they can be left open while working and any chips will fall right through to the floor. With the solid-core door and two cast-iron legs this thing is heavy – no vibration at all while turning.

What timing! I just finished this last month and, when I saw the announcement for LJ’s Woodworking Awards, thought this project was just perfect for “One Man’s Junk”!