I was driving by HD and stopped to take a post-purchase look at the
Ridgid bandsaw. One of the reasons I "caved" and bought the Delta was a
review that pointed out that the lower door does not work well on the
Ridgid. That was quite obvious after handling the Delta; the Ridgid has
the motor on top of the stand and in the would-be path of the door. The
Delta's arrangement of motor weight tensioning the belt will turn out to
be very helpful when I retrofit step pulleys to slow it down. That
alone might be reason to buy it over the Ridgid.

My biggest dangling concern was that the Ridgid would follow its table
saw cousin in having a remarkably better table than the Delta, and that
I'd feel like a complete schmuck for buying the wrong thing. While I
like the finish on the Ridgid bandsaw's table a little better than the
Delta's, I can't say there is all that much of a difference. Both saws
are configured as single speed. The Ridgid might have a slightly better
stand, but, I would want them in the same room to make a fair
comparison. Perhaps just the scars of being a demo unit, the Ridgid
struck me as having inferior tracking and tension adjustments relative
to the Delta.

The bottom line is that I think I came out ok. It is doing wonders with
the acrylic, and has been very useful otherwise. As planned, I am
(ab)using the Jet as a hacksaw and metal chopsaw, so the single speed
problem isn't bothering me much at the moment. As an aside, the more I
learn about table saws, the more I like my Ridgid. They have some room
to grow on their bandsaw however.

I've started making the first of my storage boxes. While not at all
necessary, I decided to dovetail it (for practice), and did so "by
hand". I cut the tails on the bandsaw, and having chiseled out the
first area of waste, I got smart and used the bandsaw to remove most of
the remaining waste. It works _really_ well for the tail waste. Then I
transferred the lines for the pins and used a Japanese backsaw to make
the cuts, and took most of the waste on the bandsaw, removing the rest
with a chisel. I have not bothered with tilting the table, and have no
desire to keep tilting/untilting it for the various cuts. I might
eventually make an angled table to help with the pins, but found the mix
of hand and machine sawing to be fairly reasonable for starters.

The box won't be anything to write home about, but so far it is on track
to turn out reasonably well as hack construction goes. During fitting,
I removed a little too much wood on one of the tails. That's no great
loss, a lesson learned (now if I just knew _which_ lessong), and I
might be able to largely hide it with a shim anyway. The real problem
is that I overdid the through dados. Not really expecting the box to
work out as well as it has thus far, I didn't bother to draw what I was
going to get. Serves me right for doing my own wood design work.
Again, some fill blocks and flush cutting will give a reasonable result,
and it will certainly protect my ER collets.

Bill