Converting the Knockdown Saw Horse to a Full Sized Outfeed Table

Wouldn’t it be great if you could take a small tabletop saw or midsize contractor saw to a jobsite and have a full sized outfeed table similar to a production shop? The kind of outfeed that would breakdown and set up quickly and store out of the way if needed on a daily basis, and not waste time consuming labor? Of course it would. Here is an Idea I had about the knockdown sawhorse I made the other day.

I will make this blog into a small series and I will be open to new ideas and thoughts so we can all enjoy the project and fulfill our needs individually. The first problem I came across is the height of the saw and how level it is. (Figure 1c) While I made my sawhorse/table hastily, I hadn’t planned on the outfeed table just yet. Now I would like to add it. To do this I will probably use aluminum angle mounted the tablesaw and to the cleats, and it will just drop in place and fasten with wing nuts from underneath. A rubber or foam gasket betweeen the Angle pieces should reduce any vibration and I expect there will be. The next problem I noticed was the length of the cleats. They will have to be longer with a possible third leg added to the back side so we can have more outfeed length. Also I would like to have the saw mounted in front of the front leg so I can get to the knobs safely. We could build this truss style or like my friend John and I plan on doing is making a fold up table with formica on one side so our wood flows smoothly through the blade. Our top would Ideally have a recess in it that drops around the saw manufactures table, and so we could incorporate zero tolerance blades inserts. And finally we would want to have some kind of dust collection we could quickly remove. We decided a board or even better, clear plexiglass with a hole in it hooked up to our shop vac would be the nicest option.

Overall we feel we have come up with some good ideas that will still enable the system to be set up in less than five minutes and have our cleats & legs stow away taking up a minimum of space. We think were gonna have our cake and eat it too on this project, but we’ll have to wait and see about that! In the next segment we will discuss some of our engineering pitfalls, give you a progress report and convey any new ideas we may have come up with through other members or ourselves (see photo examples)

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-- --Chuck