Delta Unisaw

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
You mentioned using a lubricant containing silicone for the trunnions. Don't do it!! I have banned anything containing silicone from my woodshop because once it gets on your wood somehow, it is invisible until you apply finish to your project. Then you discover fish eyes in your finish wherever there is silicone. Any product that contains silicone is only found in my garage at the opposite side of my property and never gets near any of my wood. 50 years ago I discovered this with a project that I was building, and ended up burning most of the wood that had been exposed because I wanted no part of making anything with it and having this trouble again.

Johnsons Paste Wax has been a great lubricant for the gears and ways of my woodworking tools. It remains in place and forms a surface crust that does not attract saw dust like petroleum lubricants do, and it won't contaminate my finishing processes.

Charley
 
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Oka

Casey
Corporate Member
You mentioned using a lubricant containing silicone for the trunnions. Don't do it!! I have banned anything containing silicone from my woodshop because once it gets on your wood somehow, it is invisible until you apply finish to your project. Then you discover fish eyes in your finish wherever there is silicone. Any product that contains silicone is only found in my garage at the opposite side of my property and never gets near any of my wood. 50 years ago I discovered this with a project that I was building, and ended up burning most of the wood that had been exposed because I wanted no part of making anything with it and having this trouble again.

Johnson's Paste Wax has been a great lubricant for the gears and ways of my woodworking tools. It remains in place and forms a surface crust that does not attract saw dust like petroleum lubricants do, and it won't contaminate my finishing processes.

Charley
Charley, I did take your advice and used Johnson's wax. Worked like a charm ! Thanks !
 

Hmerkle

Board of Directors, Development Director
Hank
Staff member
Corporate Member
Curious, where are you guys getting Johnson's Wax?
My can is quite low...
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
It's readily available at Lowes in the cleaning supplies aisle here. I've seen it in the grocery stores too. My new can came from Lowes about 2 years ago. One can lasts me about 5 years, but I'm a heavy user. I re-wax my cast iron and scroll saw tables often. The wood slides across a freshly waxed top so easy that it is worth doing just for that. I re-wax my Unisaw trunnions and gears using the wax applied with an old tooth brush about once every other year.

Charley
 

Hmerkle

Board of Directors, Development Director
Hank
Staff member
Corporate Member
It's readily available at Lowes in the cleaning supplies aisle here. I've seen it in the grocery stores too. My new can came from Lowes about 2 years ago. One can lasts me about 5 years, but I'm a heavy user. I re-wax my cast iron and scroll saw tables often. The wood slides across a freshly waxed top so easy that it is worth doing just for that. I re-wax my Unisaw trunnions and gears using the wax applied with an old tooth brush about once every other year.

Charley
Thanks Charley,
I looked in the finish asile and didn't find it... choose not to ask the pimply-faces kid who was a barista last week... LOL
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
Price Bucher's Wax or the other competitive brands. Johnsons is downright cheap by comparison, and much more readily available. If a can will last me 5+ years, it's an absolute bargain.

Charley
 

Oka

Casey
Corporate Member
This is the finished saw ......... sort of Didn't have a measure sight so I improvised one temporarily.
Charley, took your advice and got the T fence for the rip guide from Peachtree. The one that the saw came with was abused. I had to shim the middle of the new one, it was about 7 thousandths swooped in, so, I shimmed it with some paper, now maybe 2 thousandths.
Cuts very nice, there is tiny perception of resistance when ripping, thinking it might by the blade is dirty, I'll replace with a new one tomorrow (just got my blades resharpened so I have a couple to choose from. Also, I made the front access for the saw where that old Delta cover was, I hinged it with a piece of leather.
All tolled, about 600 total buckaroos (saw+material) into the saw. Of course the labor is is free .......sort of.....;):D

Thank you all for your advice and assistance, really helped.
 

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Hmerkle

Board of Directors, Development Director
Hank
Staff member
Corporate Member
Boy oh Boy!
I think you will be happy with that one!
 
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Reactions: Oka

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
That's a really nice restoration.

Keep the old fence, since there are times when a low fence is very beneficial. Clean up the original fence, fill the gouges with Bondo or whatever it takes to make it straight and with smooth surfaces again. There are times when you will thank me for this. I swap my fence
frequently, depending on which fence will do the job best.

Your next upgrade should be a Digital Fence Readout. I have a Wixey on mine, and I purchased an additional readout strip and extrusion so it covers the entire length of the fence rail. I bought this extra piece so I could use the fence on either side of the blade and also to keep the DRO module from falling to the floor if I slid the fence over the blade slot and to the far left of the blade. The Wixey package only contains enough rail and readout strip for the right side of the blade movements. I can set the fence at 1.00" and cut a board, then move the fence away and make several other cuts, then move the fence back to 1.00" and make another cut. When I measure both 1" pieces with a digital caliper, they will be within .005" of each other in cut width. I don't need better than that. The Wixey DRO makes it easy to do incremental cuts too, and switches back and forth from metric to imperial with one button. To mount the readout, I cut short pieces of 1/2 sq. steel tubing and drilled 3 holes in each. Two holes let me attach the tubing to the bottom of the Unifence rail so it cantilevered out in front of the rail. I then attached the Wixey extrusions to these (upside down) so the extrusion was on top of the 1/2" sq tubing. Then I installed the readout strips right side up into the extrusions. This positioned the extrusions low enough not to interfere with the fence movement, but positioned so that I could attach pieces of the magnetic target to each side of the Unifence casting to achieve a magnetic link to the Wixey DRO. This lets me use the DRO module on either side of the fence extrusion.

I've taken pics of all this and will post them after I can get them from the phone to the PC.

The other great option that I added to my Unisaw is a laser line generator that displays a red line across the top of the saw to show the cut line on any work that I'm doing. This laser unit is mounted to the ceiling directly above my saw and I can turn it on and off via a single button remote that I Velcro attached to the top of the Unifence Casting. Although it does help some to help me guide long pieces when rip sawing them, my primary use of it is to remind me not to put my fingers in the cut line. If my fingers ever have a red line on them, they are in the wrong place. This is especially helpful when doing blind cuts where you can't see the blade, like when doing dado cuts - if the wood has a thin spot or the saw setting changes, I don't want my fingers anywhere near where the blade breaks through the surface. This laser line keeps my fingers away, even when I can't see the blade. I bought this laser system from Woodline in Tennessee some years ago. They don't list them as available in their catalog any more, but a call might find out that they still have a few left. It comes with the laser unit with space for batteries, plus a "wall wort" power supply to use in place of batteries, and the little single button remote to turn the laser on and off. The laser head is adjustable to get it parallel and above the blade and positioned so that the line extends well forward and behind the saw.

I have owned many table saws in my life, some even new, but I was always searching for a "Better Saw". After getting and cleaning up my mid 80's Unisaw I have stopped searching. One of my children will inherit my Unisaw, and it will likely last their lifetime too, or until a better way of cutting wood accurately comes along.

Charley
 

Oka

Casey
Corporate Member
Yes I do have a Wixey just haven't had the time to install yet, I had one before, so, I am aware the shortcomings of them. Mostly, the unit gets a bit wonky when the battery gets low. I have a few more minor tweaks to get this perfected, almost there.
Good advice to keep the old fence, that I will do.
My final task is to perfect the dust collection from the blade.
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
The promised photos of my Wixey DRO attached to my Unifence. Along with my written description above, you shouldn't have any trouble understanding the way that I went about this, but ask questions if you don't understand anything. The last photo shows Scotch tape over one of the joints in the readout strip. This was suggested by Barry Wixey as a way to get the readout module to pass over the junction easier if there was any trouble.


Charley

IMG_20210504_120919 Wixey DRO 1.jpg
IMG_20210504_115027 Wixey DRO 2.jpg
IMG_20210504_115011 Wixey DRO 3.jpg
IMG_20210504_114910Wixey DRO 5.jpg
IMG_20210504_114936Wixey DRO 4.jpg
 

Oka

Casey
Corporate Member
Nice, good way to set it up. Now I remember the other issue I had with the Wixey.
There were 2 issues I noticed.
1. Readouts got suspect when the battery got low- Fix= change battery every 9 months or so.
2. Somehow some dust got into the LCD (or on top) Anyway, that was the other issue I had.
I had mounted slightly different than you, the square tube looks better than the brackets I made.
One thing I did was, super glued a magnet(s) to both pieces of steel on the fence, that made the dro really stick.
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
Yea, saw dust in the display can be irritating. I turn my air pressure down to about 20 psi and blow it out with the air nozzle. I have done this about every 2 or 3 years. It usually can be done easily by getting the air jet under one edge of the display window. Use your other hand to hold in the window so your air pressure doesn't pop it out. This has always worked well for me. Wixey needs a better seal in the design to keep this from happening.

For the battery, I understand that new versions use penlight batteries and they last longer. I have considered upgrading, but haven't yet.

Charley
 

mpeele

michael
User
I guess I have one of the new Wixeys. Looks like they have made several improvements. Mounting clips that came with it worked well with uni-fence after adding some washers for spacing and the track joint is smooth. Have not had a problem with dust.

unifenceMount.png
unifenceJoint.png
wixley.png
 

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