On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 15:29:23 GMT, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 03:36:56 GMT, Tim Carver
brought forth from the murky depths:

2) Mounted my outfeed table top on 28" drawer slides. The table is
28" deep,so when it's pushed in, it doesn't get in my way. When I
push it out, it extends out to 56" behind the saw (60" past the blade)
which is just long enough to handle 8' stock, and I can move it in and
out without even walking around to the back of the saw. After
suffering for years with temp supports and and later a large fixed
table that took too much room, I'm really happy with this solution.

Great! I've been trying to come up with something similar on wheels
for Dina and you found it for me. Do you have part of the sliding
section as a flat area with a stop to make it work? Slots in the
immovable part for the larger sled? Thanks for the ideas!

Larry, I used 2 54" pieces of 3/8" by 3" cold finish steel bar, bolted
to the sides of the saw, parallel to the miter slots, with the edge
dropped just slightly (.01") below the tablesaw surface.

You could do the same thing with wood, of course; 1x4 maple or 3/4" x
4" ply would be about right. These pieces are the sole support for
the top, so the area under the top behind the saw is totally free for
storage. The table top itself is 1.25" Fnnform with a .5" UHMW top
screwed to it. Te drawer slides are just screwed to the edges of the
Finnform. I made it a very tight fit on purpose, and I've never had
the table move as work slides over it, not that it would really matter
if it did, the support would be moving with the work, which would be
fine.

I have a cab saw, and I've never seen any indication of tipping when
the table is extended with material on it, but perhaps this wouldn't
work as well with a contractor saw. Just to be sure, I bolted my saw
down for safety. I certainly wouldn't let the total go much more
than 27" behind the saw without a leg to support it. There is no
reason really that you couldn't have a support leg on a caster if you
wanted, though. In my case, I want that space, I have a tool cabinet
under there.

The drawer slides are screwed to the insides of the bars, with the top
of the slides flush with the top of the bar (remember,.01 down from
the saw top). There are no stops, the table travel stops when the
drawer slides reach the end of their travel. Remember, that far edge
is 60" out from the back of the blade, long enough for 8' stock. If I
need more (e.g, if I'm ripping a 12 footer) I have to use a temporary
support.

One bar is bolted to the left side of the saw, the other is bolted to
the right side of the right wing (I happen not to be using a left
wing, because I have a sliding table).I bolted the left side bar to
the saw thru the holes where the left wing would normally attach. On
the right side, I drilled the right side of the wing in 3 places and
bolted the bar to the outside of the right wing.

The following detail is confusing, and it doesn't really have much to
do with the sliding table idea, but it does explain why I chose to
support the sliding table with steel instead of wood. Remember, I had
an extra wing. I used it behind the right wing. It is supported on
the right by the right steel bar, giving me an 8" by 54" right hand
side wing. This is why I chose steel for the support bar. Wood would
be fine for the support bars if you weren't doing this.

If anybody's interested in this, I'll post a pic. I've kind got a lot
of stuff going on here which complicates things, but the sliding
outfeed is really pretty easy and simple.






------------- -----------
T===========| | slider ||stop
S===========| | ||
------------- -----------


3) Replaced shelves under my bench with simple shallow
pullouts. This was so easy to do it isn't funny, and it improved the
cleanliness of my shop a ton, because I can now get a lot more stuff
neatly arranged on the pullouts than I ever could on the shelves.

In visualizing what you did, I decided that my smaller tailed tools
would benefit by being placed on a shallow sliding drawer under the
assembly table. I think I'll add one to the mechanics vise bench, too.
Now to find an Accuride set that slides both ways for the pair on
the assembly bench and devise a simple center detent to keep it in
place when I roll the bench around. A spring-loaded inline skate
wheel in a rounded V-groove ought to do the trick.
If you ever find such slides, please let me know! I want to add some
2 way drawers under the right side of my saw, to store panels under
construction.

-
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Tim Carver