A couple of weeks ago I received my new sliding table saw. Grizzly ships fast!!! Ordered on a Monday, had it delivered Wednesday the following week (and I could have had it a day earlier...). Barely had enough time to disassemble the old table saw before the move the following Saturday.
The machine was extremely well crated, it took a Sawzall and crowbar to get it all open. The sliding table was in a sturdy cardboard box. The box had a bit of damage, but the table itself was pristine (whew!)
This machine is pretty heavy - close to 600lb. But with a dolly, some ratcheting straps and two helpers, it was actually pretty straightforward to get it down around the house into the basement.
Setup was fairly painless, although the small, low contrast grey photos in the manual made things a little difficult. I also have a bunch of washers left over. MarkE was extremely helpful helping me solve some assembly issues (some of which were definitely user error, not the fault of the manual).
Front view:
Rear view:
Space wise, it doesn't take up much more space than a regular table saw. It's a little wider with the crosscut fence installed, but that's about it. I do miss having a conventional outfeed table, it was a great place for project parts, tools and junk to accumulate....which you'd then have to move to other spots in the shop in order to use the table saw.
There is definitely a learning curve involved going from a conventional to a sliding table saw. As in: Learning not to fiddle with infeed rollers when using wide boards
and learning you don't have to use awkward clamps and stop blocks and learning you can cut large panels without a circular saw and edge guide and learning you can rip through 2" hardwood without having to put on a dedicated rip blade. I've only been using the saw about two weeks, and although I can't say I have all the steps and operations down in the most efficient manner possible, I already feel very comfortable with it.
The crosscut fence on the sliding table is awesome. It comes with two solid stops you can flip up, and it's ideal for quickly squaring up a panel.
The rip fence is a different design than the usual Biesmeyer T-style fence. The scale is fixed, and since there is no cursor, getting it accurate was a bit of a chore. There are three small nuts you have to loosen to move it, so it was a bit of trial and error. Squaring the fence wasn't too bad though, I had used a spacer block when I mounted the rail and that got everything within .002". A really nice feature is that you can slide the fence back by loosening the two knobs. This allows you to use the fence as a cutoff guide in conjunction with the sliding table.
In the picture above I have a dado stack installed. You have to make a custom Zero Clearance Insert for this, which isn't trivial - cut out, rounded corners, countersunk holes etc. But you can easily make 3 or 4 in an hour or so.
The handwheels are metal, and when you hit the stop, it stops. Solid. There's no "well let me just push a little to go beyond the stop". It's there.
The sliding table is definitely the star of the show. It makes so many things so incredibly easy to do. Operations which are awkward or unsafe on a regular saw suddenly become trivial. Most of the time, your hands are far away from the blade, and the riving knife (not shown here - I was cutting dadoes at the time) works extremely well. I'm going to have to rebuild some jigs, like the spline cutter to reinforce corners. But all that is child's play because you can build everything on the sliding table. And no more biding miter bars.
I cut some plywood panels for my new router table (the old one was mounted in the table saw), and with the scoring blade, I had zero tearout. Very impressive.
What it feels like to start the saw with both blades operational:
The only thing I really don't care for is the guard. The dust collection is decent, but it doesn't move well and it's opaque. I ordered a Shark Guard which should get here before Christmas. There is also some accumulation of dust in the cabinet, I'll see if I can make some sort of shelf to prevent it from going all the way down and out the sides. Another annoyance is that you need slightly different size Allen wrenches for the various adjustments, that could have been thought out better.
All in all I couldn't be happier. This is one awesome saw, and at a bargain price (especially with the 10% off coupon :thumbs_up).
Time for the happy dance! :banana: :banana: :banana: :tool:
The machine was extremely well crated, it took a Sawzall and crowbar to get it all open. The sliding table was in a sturdy cardboard box. The box had a bit of damage, but the table itself was pristine (whew!)
This machine is pretty heavy - close to 600lb. But with a dolly, some ratcheting straps and two helpers, it was actually pretty straightforward to get it down around the house into the basement.
Setup was fairly painless, although the small, low contrast grey photos in the manual made things a little difficult. I also have a bunch of washers left over. MarkE was extremely helpful helping me solve some assembly issues (some of which were definitely user error, not the fault of the manual).
Front view:
Rear view:
Space wise, it doesn't take up much more space than a regular table saw. It's a little wider with the crosscut fence installed, but that's about it. I do miss having a conventional outfeed table, it was a great place for project parts, tools and junk to accumulate....which you'd then have to move to other spots in the shop in order to use the table saw.
There is definitely a learning curve involved going from a conventional to a sliding table saw. As in: Learning not to fiddle with infeed rollers when using wide boards
and learning you don't have to use awkward clamps and stop blocks and learning you can cut large panels without a circular saw and edge guide and learning you can rip through 2" hardwood without having to put on a dedicated rip blade. I've only been using the saw about two weeks, and although I can't say I have all the steps and operations down in the most efficient manner possible, I already feel very comfortable with it.The crosscut fence on the sliding table is awesome. It comes with two solid stops you can flip up, and it's ideal for quickly squaring up a panel.
The rip fence is a different design than the usual Biesmeyer T-style fence. The scale is fixed, and since there is no cursor, getting it accurate was a bit of a chore. There are three small nuts you have to loosen to move it, so it was a bit of trial and error. Squaring the fence wasn't too bad though, I had used a spacer block when I mounted the rail and that got everything within .002". A really nice feature is that you can slide the fence back by loosening the two knobs. This allows you to use the fence as a cutoff guide in conjunction with the sliding table.
In the picture above I have a dado stack installed. You have to make a custom Zero Clearance Insert for this, which isn't trivial - cut out, rounded corners, countersunk holes etc. But you can easily make 3 or 4 in an hour or so.
The handwheels are metal, and when you hit the stop, it stops. Solid. There's no "well let me just push a little to go beyond the stop". It's there.
The sliding table is definitely the star of the show. It makes so many things so incredibly easy to do. Operations which are awkward or unsafe on a regular saw suddenly become trivial. Most of the time, your hands are far away from the blade, and the riving knife (not shown here - I was cutting dadoes at the time) works extremely well. I'm going to have to rebuild some jigs, like the spline cutter to reinforce corners. But all that is child's play because you can build everything on the sliding table. And no more biding miter bars.
I cut some plywood panels for my new router table (the old one was mounted in the table saw), and with the scoring blade, I had zero tearout. Very impressive.
What it feels like to start the saw with both blades operational:
The only thing I really don't care for is the guard. The dust collection is decent, but it doesn't move well and it's opaque. I ordered a Shark Guard which should get here before Christmas. There is also some accumulation of dust in the cabinet, I'll see if I can make some sort of shelf to prevent it from going all the way down and out the sides. Another annoyance is that you need slightly different size Allen wrenches for the various adjustments, that could have been thought out better.
All in all I couldn't be happier. This is one awesome saw, and at a bargain price (especially with the 10% off coupon :thumbs_up).
Time for the happy dance! :banana: :banana: :banana: :tool:
