10" Table Saw

My new 10″ JET Table Saw

Well in true me stylee nothing happens for ages and then three things at once! Things have been slow on the modelling front due to various life things getting in the way but I have managed to eek a bit of time here and there and although this isn’t an actual modelling post it is more a setting for the foundations. In the first pic you will see my newly set up table saw. This has been sitting around for oh I don’t know months, but finally got over the inertia to get it out of the box and set up in the workshop, only took about three days with potters out there with cups of tea, lots of looking and ‘thinking about’ followed by more cups of tea and then some action. Yesterday was the big grand starting up day and thankfully the morning was set sunny as the workshop doesn’t have a lot of light, well only natural light at the moment so rather reliant of some reflected sun to illuminate the table. Thought that this was important due to the nature of the beast and its ability to sever limbs and the like. I am not scare of these kinda things but it pays to be cautious and in this instance RTFM was observed completely. Finding a straight and levelish piece of timber was another thing. However I can happily report table saw started up perfectly and zinged along until the kill switch was hit rather gingerly. Next up was the ceremonial cutting, well before the 10 minute hunt for safety glasses and ear defenders, the later not found but a memory of leaving in allotment shed so mental note made to collect before 2014-08-26_13.47.56any more cutting is carried out. Having watched numerous vids on Youtube with people not using protective ‘stuff’ makes me think I would rather keep hold of all my digits, limbs and faculties.

All in all a successful and positive step forward in 15minutemodding towers, however I do have to pass on a bit of a mini rant. The quality of this so called quality hobbyist saw is in my view bordering on the crap spectrum. The whole thing has a cheap and nasty feel to it and after the original bits missing needing replacements I rather lost confidence in the whole thing which is why I guess it took so long to get to this point. The fence is nigh on bloody useless and also the mitre ‘thing’! I was about to do the following when a bit of sense prevailed. So I am now looking for ways to mod it. I like the vid as the bulk of what I see myself cutting is going to be ply and small dimensional lumber but I am hold fire before going down this route of replacing the top with ply, I will firstly look at a beefed up measuring channel and fence locking handle but I am going to try it out on some board first to see how far out of gauge it is. For a Swiss firm and a Trusted UK distributor I would have expected a little more oh well onwards..

Having posted else where my desire to do something constructive lead to a dresser top ops session. This initially started out as a test of some Kato track and then became a mini ops sesh. Amazing what you can do with four wagons and a loco. Having started out with all but my only DC loco leaving me to think all the others had failed in storage or transport I had the head slapping moment of realising that all the other locos are DCC and the KATO power unit for the GEX set in DC Duh!!!! anyway spent a couple of happy evenings switching wagons around on an imaginary town somewhere in deepest New England. This lead me on to further thoughts about my then current plan, but this and more in a further post as duties call!

One more thing… just a teaser for a bit of an epic adventure next week with my mate Mr D