Sliding Carriage Panel Saw

WOW ! This is a really nice set up. wish I had the wall space so I could make me one. But that’s down the road a bit. Anyway welcome to Lumber Jocks. I’m sure you’ll learn a few things as well as get some ideals. I know I have.

-- - " If you want square work, You don't cut corners. " - -- Tom Goodman, Santa Maria, CA. woodworkertom@gmail.com

That turned out GREAT!!

Saw this and thought about making it- if only I could get a full sheet of plywood to my basement shop!!

where did you get the “pole” across the top from ? I used to use the metal version of this model at a lumber yard I worked at back in the 80’s…..what did you use for the saw”return” mechanism ?

-- MILK COWS , NOT TAXPAYERS : ) .......Bumper sticker quote.

GREAT

-- Suliman , Syria, jablah , suliman73ahmad@yahoo.com

Thanks everyone… this is my first project on Lumberjocks and I can’t believe how quickly people have responded since I’ve posted it.

-- Matt, RI

Dusty56,
The pole across the top is a 10’ EMT conduit from Home Depot with a 1 1/2” outside diameter. The saw guide rides along this pole for the rip cuts.

I used a pair of 9/16” x 16 1/2” springs from Lowes along with some pulleys to create the suspension system for doing crosscuts. The base for the circular saw rides up and down a pair of T-Tracks that I got from Rockler.

-- Matt, RI

Excellent job. Less than half the cost of store bought is impressive. Nice work.
Doug in AZ.

-- If you need craft books - please visit our small business at http://www.wittywife.com

This is going to be my first project of the Spring. All I have to do is move all the plywood that is leaning against the wall of my garage shop to make room for it. I have all this plywood and find excuses not to build something with it because it is such a pain to work with. My second project will be the cabinet station for my tablesaw that I have been wanting to build for a long time. Thanks for the inspiration. I have favorited your project to remind me in the Spring to get busy.

bayouman,
I’m glad to hear that you’ll be tackling this one… It was certainly a challenge to make, but I am so glad that I did.

I had my fair share of learning experience while I was building it, and if during your building process you have any questions that you’d like to ask, by all means feel free to ask…

-- Matt, RI

In my dream shop I would have one of those. Really good idea. That will save you so much time and energy.

-- mtnwild (Jack), It's not what you see, it's how you see it.

Great job! This will save you so much work you’ll be happy all over again every time you use it.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Wow!! This is awesome. You are the best little Woodguy in the world. Can you make me one of these?

-- You can call me "Big Wood"

I’ve seen the plans for one of these in shopnotes. Have always wanted to make one. Looks like you did a bang up job. I think you can either make them vertical or horizontal.

-- Mike from Michigan - mwurm13@yahoo.com

Looks well thought out. Great job.

-- The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them

wow i must have one of these thanks for showing us

-- I buy tools so i can make more money,so ican buy more tools so I can work more, to make more money, so I can buy more tool, so I can work more

A brilliant solution for small shop owners everywhere.

-- /\/\/\ BarryW /\/\/\ Stay so busy you don't have time to die.

That is a great one. I have wanted a panel saw for a long time. I may have to take your ideas add a few of my own and make one too

-- making sawdust....

Good build. It looks like everybody like it.

-- Thos. Angle

Lookin Good Great Job

-- Jim, Kentucky

That’s cool, I like it.

-- masrol, kuala lumpur, MY.

Really great design and very useful.
Thanks for sharing with us.

-- My woodwork blog : http://www.isetehtud.pri.ee/blog/

I have that issue of Shop Notes and have been trying to decide if I should build this or not. I definately like the idea, but wonder about the quality of cut. I have a couple questions for you if you don’t mind.

1) Does the saw slide up and down in the T-track smoothly? I know sometimes my sopt blocks like to stick or catch when sliding in T-track.

2) When sliding horizontally, does the saw get out of parelle with the top bar very easily? I was worried that it would vary a little and affect the quality of the cut.

Thanks,

-- Kevin, Wichita, Kansas

Kevin,
I don’t mind the questions at all…

I had the same concerns about the quality of cut and had my fair share of trial and error during the making of the panel saw. When I first built it, it was dead on, but being from New England the weather has certainly entered into equation. I check it each time I use it, and for one reason or the other it ended up being about 1/32 off on one end the last time I went to use it. This is easily fixed by adding a few layers of the blue painters tape to the dowels that the plywood board rests on till it is back to the way it should be. When I’ve needed to do this it’s taken me about 10 minutes tops. The key is making sure that your measurements are dead on accurate when you are building it.
1) Between waxing the tracks and the weight of the saw and sawbase pulling down I haven’t had a problem with the T-Track sticking. One thing you need to be careful of though is how you set up the tracks. If you follow how they do it in the ShopNotes plans then you should be fine.
2) Assuming you set everything up correctly the saw should never come out of parallel with the bar. The main reason is that it is attached to it. However, if the dowels that the plywood sits on is not perfectly parallel with bar then bar/saw combination will not be lined up correctly with the plywood. Like I said in the beginning… if you are dead on in your initial measurements you will be extremely successful.

Now I will say this… I didn’t build this panel saw with the intention that my cuts would be furniture ready once it came off the saw. My intention was to cut down sheets of plywood slightly over sized and as perfectly as I could so that I could get the pieces into my shop and be able to do the final dimensioning on my table saw.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask. Also, if you want me to go into more detail on what I’ve already mentioned I’d be happy to do that as well.

-- Matt, RI

Matt—

You catch on very quickly—get all your learning out of the way on the shop furniture, so that when you make a boo-boo on furniture for the house, you already know how to fix that! Same principle as the difference between an amateur and professional musician is that the professional knows how to make his mistakes unnoticeable to the amateur!

-- There's no tool like an old tool...

Very nice work. Looks like you have the attention to detail part down. Bet you will find this useful for many years into the future. Alas, I like so many other here, do not have the wall space for such a glorious device!

-- //FC - Round Rock, TX - "Experience is what you get just after you need it"

Excellent work, i only see this work in the shopnotes magazine. Ibeen thinking about make this but whit steel. u can try use some steel for reinforcement of some critical parts to prevent bending. Suerte!

-- Sorry I do not speak English very well, nor write, but I learn

Nice job! I might have to add this project to the list. It might actually help me get through the rest of the list.

-- "I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" - Pablo Picasso

Great job. We are thinking of building this for use in our car audio shop. We make custom boxes for subwoofers. It’s very difficult and dangerous for one guy to handle 3/4” MDF sheet to cut on a table saw so this should work great. Problem is that although we are handy I’m not sure if our skill level can fill in the blanks that the plans have in them. Is there any more detailed listing of what hardware to purchase and suggestions from where? Also is it possible to mount a router to the rails and be able to cut circles, for the subs? I would think since the carriage moves up and down and right and left that a circle can be made, unless the movement is difficult. Also not being able to see the actual cutting edge would make it difficult to follow a cut line. I suppose the saw mount could be made out of 1/2” plexiglass. Any comments or assistance would be appreciated.

lvflyer,
I thought the same thing with regards to my skill level (I’m only a beginner), but I figured it would be a great way to find out one way or the other. To be honest, it was a little overwhelming at first, but once I got going it wasn’t actually bad at all. I will say this though, if you can get someone to give you hand building it, you will be in for a much easier time.
As far as the plans go, ShopNotes 88 has a full plan with a hardware and materials list. I found all the hardware I needed at either Home Depot, Lowes, Rockler, or Woodcraft. Mostly I was able to find what I needed at either Home Depot or Lowes, but for some of the more specialty items, like the T-Tracks for instance, I would wait till either Rockler or Woodcraft offered free shipping and bought what i could afford at that time.
For the Router attachment part, I think you could certainly make a second base that would be for the router since the base is held on by T bolts and knobs thus making it removable. If you prerout the different size circles you could use them as guides to run your router around in. Something like that.
The plexiglass base would certainly be interesting, but truthfully I don’t think you would need it if the purpose it see the cut line. If you look behind the saw guide while the saw is attached (but obviously not running) you can actually see where the blade will make contact with the piece. If you mark the piece ahead of time where you want to start the cut (along with the tape measure that you attach per the plans) you will get a very accurate cut. However, as I’ve said in earlier posts, your accuracy will only be there if you make the panel saw dead on accurate while being built. If at any point you are thinking, “well it isn’t perfect, but it is good enough” then chances are that “good enough” may bite you later on.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Good Luck!!

-- Matt, RI

great job….This is something I need to do as well…..thanks for the post

-- Todd, Oak Ridge, TN, Hello my name is Todd and I'm a Toolholic, I bought my last tool 10 days, no 4 days, oh heck I bought a tool on the way here! †

Thanks Matt. I did find a copy of the plans and upon further study found the source list on page 51. I’ve never read Shopnotes before so I didn’t know they listed sources for projects. I’m curious as to why a counter-weight wasn’t used instead of a spring. Also can you elaborate on the types of wood that was used for each section. I’m sure it wasn’t just construction grade. Why doesn’t the unit sit on the floor without the carriage bolts? Have you found the dowels to be a negative or positive item? Why not just use a lip or shelf?

lvflyer,
The spring actually works surprisingly well. In the plans they describe it as a suspension system to lighten the load of the weight of the saw and the base as you slide it down for a crosscut. Not sure why they chose this method over a counterweight system. I could be that with the saw in the base the counterweights system would pull it up effectively, but when the saw is removed you would have to make sure to lock down the base or the shift in weight of not having the saw in the base would cause it to launch up. Just a guess though. With the springs the saw base slides to just above the middle of the saw guide, and when the saw is on the base it hangs just below the mid point.

For the grid I cut down construction grade 2×4’s to the 1 1/2” x 1 1/2” dimensions that the plan called for. If you were looking at the finished grid these rails don’t need to be dead on straight to the left and right as long as they are flush front to back (hopefully that makes sense). The reason is that all these do is support the plywood panel (or MDF). As long as the panel lays flat and even it doesn’t matter if they aren’t perfectly straight going left to right.

What matters the most is that the 10’ conduit pipe across the top is dead parallel with the 1 1/2” x 5 1/2” x 120” lower rail and its dowels that the panel sits on. The saw guide rides on the conduit and the panel rests on the lower rails dowels… if those 2 are dead parallel then you will have dead on cuts. That being said you want the lower rail to be as straight as you can. One thing I considered doing, but didn’t, was to use plywood. Now the problem with plywood is that the longest size is 96”. So in order to make up the additional 2 feet I considered taking two 8’ pieces of plywood (cut to 5 1/2” width) and two 2’ pieces of plywood (cut to 5 1/2” width). Then from left to right I was going to have one of the 8’ pieces then one of the 2’ pieces. Then glued and screwed on top of that going from left to right would be the 2nd 2’ piece, then the 2nd 8’ piece. This would have given a pretty sturdy 10’ piece of plywood.

Now saying all that I ended up just going with a 2×6 because “that’s what the plan said to do”... Looking back on it if i had to do it over I probably would have done the plywood idea because out of all the pieces on the panel saw, the lower rail was the only piece that was affected by the seasonal changes…granted only slightly, but a change none the less.

I used a piece of oak to make the carriage lock that the cam lever hooks into. This is used to lock the guide in place on the conduit. Everything else on the saw was made from Birch plywood.

The saw doesn’t sit on the floor. It actually rests on 2 wall cleats. The carriage bolt are used to sturdy it on a potential uneven floor. For me this is in my garage and it was helpful to be able to adjust the carriage bolt based on the slight dips on my floor. Also it makes cleaning up the saw dust alot easier since the whole thing is essentially elevated. Another big reason I like the carriage bolts is because since this is in my garage I didn’t want the wood touching the concrete.

The dowels are both a negative and a positive. The reason they used dowels is because eventually they get chewed up by the circular saw as you make your crosscuts. The dowels are not glued in which makes them extremely easy to replace when needed. A shelf would not give you this benefit. However, the down side is that they need to be dead straight and parallel with the conduit. Now assuming that your lower rail is dead straight this should be easy to do since you can use the edge of the rail as a reference point. Now if the lower rail isn’t dead flat then this becomes tricky because you still need to make sure all the dowels are parallel with the conduit.

I know it sounds like a mess, but in reality if you are careful it isn’t that bad.

I hope I answered your questions… if you have any others feel free to ask.

-- Matt, RI

I love it… giddy-up!!

-- You can call me "Big Wood"

Wow that is an awesome setup. Someday Matt, I hope I grow up to be as smart as you!!!! Holy Cows!!!

-- ForbiddenSole, Wasilla AK

Great project! Wish I’d found this site sooner (just joined today). After several weeks of trial and error, I made a fold-up, easel-like version of a panel saw using an old “hollywood” metal bed frame, rollerblade bearings, and an extra Skilsaw I had laying around. Doesn’t take up any wall space, and with a couple hinges I plan to attach it to the ceiling above my garage door. I’ll post some pics soon. Anyway, your ideas sure would’ve saved me some cussin’ time.

-- Ken, Florida