Greetings All,
I am new to the boards and an aspiring Woodie! I plan to get lots from these pages as I get deeper into the addiction that is Wood Working.
I have like many other handymen often dreamed of what I could do if I only had the right equipment. I have a range of reasonalbe hand and power tools and have been able to put them to good use around the house for maintenance and some basic construction of pergolas and the like. I had been planning on switching my beer money over to becoming tool money. I figured that my figure would appreciate the change of purchases as would my long suffering wife! I had reached a point where I was ready to make the commitment but wasn't sure where to start. So. I am on the way to Moruya on the South Coast of NSW to spend a few days being told by my Mother in Law what some of my weaker points are, when we stopped in at the Batemans Bay Plaza to buy some stapels (I still needed some beer to get me through the visit!). There in the middle of the shop taking up pride of place was a Taurus Table Saw for the pretty price (as far as I was concerned) of $199.00 I knelt down next to this wonderous sight and looked to the heavens to see if there was going to be a fanfare and a godly hand pointing though the light at me. There wasn't. This did in no way stop me from calling back my Wife who had walked straight past this gift from the heavens. This is what I need I said to Kathy. If I had one of these I could make heaps of things. I must have had someone looking down on me that day because 10 mins later I was walking out pushing a trolley with my new prized table saw. So, I have got this thing what now. Well what now was I had to spend 4 days at the coast no playing with my new toy.
Upon arriving home from the coast, the first thing I did was take my new box of goodies down to the shed. I know there was going to be some work to put it together and was quiet frankly a little worried that the instructions may have gone the way of many other instructions translated into English by someone who spoke Chinese and was reading them from a master written in French. I was however peasently surprised to find that the instructions were fairly easy to follow and made proper sense. I guess it took me about an hour and a half to get the components all together and looking like a real table saw. If I had to give a score out of ten for the instruction/construction phase of my ownership, I would give it a 7 and a half. Anyone with a reasonalbly mechanical mind will be able to put one of these together with out to much ado.
I have used the saw to rip down som old hard wood tree stakes I found at the timber tip and turned that timber into a very nice picture frame for a photo for my Mother. The saw has plenty of power and didn't hesitate at all when put to the test. The accuracy of the rip fence is good for the price of the saw. I am sure that with more practice I will be able to turn out some very good work. I am not a big fan of the riving knife set up that they have used. It is functional, but it takes a bit to remove the knif if you want to cut rebates or tennon type joints.
In all, $199 for a table saw that is reasonably powered and can do cuts up to 45 degrees I think it is a very good buy. In all I would give it a 8 out of 10.
Cheers,
Grim.:)
