Thursday, August 25, 2011

Making a riving knife part 2

So I tore down the table saw. When I got the top off (which must weigh more than 300 lbs!) this is what I saw.


So I decided that I will need to improve the dust collection as well. Not visible in this picture is a little deflector that prevents the dust from coming out the slot where the lift lower crank travels when tilting the blade. That's about it for dust collection. So I will try to improve the dust collection as well. I'm thinking some shroud around the blade with some flexable DC host to handle tilting. Hooked up through the factory dc port. I will still need to clean it out once in awhile, but I hope I will be able to collect most of the dust.








After getting the top off, I vacumed out the saw and cleaned it up. Then I removed the motor shroud and using a brass punch a knocked out the arbor. It came out much harder than I expected, which is probably why the arbor didn't move once the retaining nut came loose.



I disassembled the arbor, and ordered new bearings from accurate bearing. They were helpful and with the part numbers from the old bearings it was easy to get the right parts. But when I called the first person I got started to take my order and then said "Wait, are you a woodworker?" I said "Yes"; then she transfered me to someone else who took my order. I thought that was odd. But they told me they would have them out today so that's good. The bad was that the front bearing is a double bearing and was $38.00! thats alot for a bearing even the rear bearing I thought was pricey at $9.00. but both of these are special bearings the front being a double and the rear being a raised flange. And Accurate was the only place that had them in stock, and the other places I called wanted around $75.00 for the pair and I would have to wait 4 to 6 weeks.


As for the riving knife I plan to put some sort of pivot arount the arbor hole on the yolk. I only have 1/4" of room to work with, so it's going to be tight. I will probably lose a 1/2" or so of height, If I lose that I will still have about 4 1/4" of cutting, so I can still get through my 16/4 stock. So I'm okay with that. Forgot to take a picture of that! maybe tommorrow I will get one.

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