From Junk to Dust....(Part 4, "Slowly rising from the junk")

Howdy y’all. Well it’s been a few weeks since the last update so here it is. The garage/woodshop has not progressed much due to family commitments. However, over the last week I have managed to tune up my budget B&D table saw. The alignment was way off from the miter slots and the blade wobble was excessive. After attending a wood expo in Seattle I got to see what a ‘real’ table saw and blade looks like…..and I don’t mean the next B&D model up! I’m still salivating over the Powermatic 2000. Anyway, I realized that the blade my table saw came with is a thin kerf and so I decided to replace it with a full kerf blade. Being shy of a few funds I opted not to buy the Forrest II Woodworker (that and the fact that the table saw cost the same as this blade) so I bought an Irwin combo blade (50T) and installed it. The wobble is now negligible when cutting 2” stock in comparison to the non square cuts prior to this blade. I guess the extra thickness of the blade (full kerf) help stiffen the blade. Another point worth noticing as a rookie wannabee woodworker is to watch out for the maximum rpm of the blades. The blade I removed is rated for the saw speed of 5000 rpm. The Irwin blade I installed is rated at a maximum of 9000 rpm. I guess if it is rated at almost twice the speed of the motor then wobble will no longer be a factor…...with the exception of the density of the material being cut of course.
While I was tuning up the table saw and making multitudes of sawdust (speeding up the recycle process) I did notice that everything, and I mean everything, had a layer of sawdust on it. This was a nightmare to clean up with my shop vac. Fortunately due to Matt Vanderlist’s and Marc Spagnuolo’s podcasts I was aware of the dangers of this and have been wearing a respirator throughout. So, this weekend my wife allowed me to go and buy a mini dust collector. This is a 900CFM portable unit and filters down to 35 microns according to the spec. Anyway, I took my table saw off the stand, made an attachment to the base for the dust collector and reassembled it. After the tune up, new blade, and the dust collector it was time to put it to the test….....SWEET! as Matt would say, and NICE! as Marc would say :o) I am suitably impressed.
I also purchased a block plane today and have made some oak runners for the miter slots and tomorrow I will be completing a cross cutting sled. Now I know this is like Pre-K for the majority of you guys out there but I’m enjoying every minute of it. The runners were a great opportunity to practice some planing skills and the cross cut sled will compensate for my saws lack of ability to have a zero clearance insert. Once this is done, watch out world, there will be another wood splinterer in the neighborhood :o)
Stay tuned folks and remember to support some of our favorite sources of inspiration as well as offer them encouragement. For me this is Lumberjocks.com, MattsBasementWorkshop.com, TheWoodWhisperer.com, and of course Furnitology. Great job y’all.
Oh, one last point. The company I work for had an associate survey last week and they gave us the questionnaire and a pencil to complete it. I found myself looking at the pencil and wondered what wood it was…...Is there any hope for me?

-- -If you love wood, cut wood, sand wood....it really doesn't matter how it turns out; you've got Dust4brains!