I have two Disston and Sons thumb hole rip saws for sale. I can see the etching on the blades but they are vary hard to read. Both blades are 5 1/2 teeth per inch. Both handles are complete with no horns broken off . No cracks or anything.

First is #1. If you look at the teeth one can still see the shine of when it was sharpened last. One has to really look but, There are  a few teeth that show the very top of the teeth blunted. I am just putting  in my two cents is but I think the teeth just needed another pass with the file. I only mention it because I want to be up front. I think it will be a good performer for quit some time before it needs sharpening again. The saw plate is straight, no bends or kinks.

   

   

The second one is sharp but it show a little use. And it will be a long time before it needs sharpening. The handle shows a lot of use in that it has a lot of grime from hand use. If refinished it would be as beautiful as it was when it left the factory. All in all other than cosmetics, it is every bit as good as saw #1
 
   

   

It is hard to get good pictures of long objects to I just placed them side by side and took the pictures.

   

   

Asking $50 plus shipping for each.

Tom

As stated in earlier post I’m building a corner workbench in my shop which will see light duty use. Does anyone have any experience with melamine? Was thinking about using 3/4 MDF as base and was wondering if a sheet of 3/4 Melamine on top of the MDF would be a good option. Other option is 2 layers of MDF covered by 1/4 hardboard.

Thanks

The photo is a table we saw in a restaurant. I am making one like it. The challenge is attaching the angle braces to the flat surfaces. All told there are ten braces. Would just glue hold?  I could drive pegs or screws through the angled ends, but prefer a cleaner look. 
Thanks for your thoughts.

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I need to replace the table on my Dads radial arm saw. Was originally made out of particle board. Should I use particle board, MDF or plywood. 

Thanks

You might remember my posts about the Dewalt GA 24" crosscut RAS I recently bought from a cabinet shop, where it was used for rough cutting stock.  After getting it tuned as best as I could, the ways were worn enough that I could not get cuts of the quality I want for cabinet quality parts.  The cuts would wander and wouldn't stay square along the length of the cut.  Remachining the ways is not a simple nor cost effective process, so I thought of other ways on how I might bring them back to a high-quality condition.  I thought of filing them down but decided that it would be difficult to file off probably 0.020" and keep them flat and coplaner.  Then I thought about filling in the low/rough spots with epoxy and decided to try that approach.  Worst case, it wouldn't hurt anything.  

This is what a section of the way looked like prior to repair.  



You can see the roughness and the low spots.  I used JB Metal Reinforced Epoxy to fill in the defects, then filled it back flat to the metal.  It looked like this afterwards.



After I made the repair, the carriage rolled beautifully smoothly in the arm, for a while, but then I started to feel clunking and when I inspected, I found that the bearings had started to pull up the epoxy.  I patched the epoxy and let it cure for a week, but the problem remained.  That led me to think about adding a thin piece of steel on top of the epoxy for the bearings to ride on.  I found some 0.033" thick x 3/4" wide stainless steel strapping material (the stuff you band pallets with) and thought that might work.  I roughed up the side to be bonded to the ways and glued on the two pieces with more JB Weld.  To make sure the banding would be flat on the ways and coplaner, I made a clamping caul to fit into the saw arm.



With the strapping in place it looked like this.



Clamping force was applied with turn screws against the cross pieces that rest against the bottom of the arm. 


 
After curing, I removed the caul and cleaned up any stray epoxy.  The ways no look like this.



The strapping is flat and smooth, with no bumps or low spots.  

While I was at it, I decided to change the bearings in the motor carriage.  Removing the stub axles from the bearings required the use of a frame press, which I don't own, so I made one.  



It worked great to remove the old bearings and press on the new ones.  



All good, except the saw carriage wouldn't fit into the arm.  I had guessed that adding the strapping might take up all the slack adjustment for the bearings and that turned out to be true.  OK, now what?  I decided to see if I could find smaller top bearings and I was able to.  The OE bearings are 40 mm diameter.  The new ones are 35 mm.  The new ones are narrower, too, but that doesn't matter for the upper bearings, but it did require that I make some spacer washers to take up the slack on the axles.  It's nice to have a CNC for things like this.  I used 1/4" acrylic and had them made in a few minutes.  UHMW plastic would have been a better choice, but I didn't have any.  



With the new top bearings installed it looked like this.



With the smaller top bearings, the carriage fit into the arm and after some adjustments it rolls very smoothly now.  Moreover, cuts are square and with much less wavering now along the length of the cut.  Still not perfect, but some of it might be blade related, and I'm evaluating different blades.  This photos shows the cut quality before and after the fix.  The before specimen is at the bottom.  You make a crosscut, then paint the cut edge black, then sand it a few times on sandpaper glued to my jointer table.  Low spots stay dark, high spots get sanded light.  



The after sample on top is marginally better, more so because it has none of the really light and dark spots at the beginning of the cut on the right side like the lower before sample.  Both cuts were made with the same blade to eliminate that variable.  

If any of you have a saw with a similar problem, this might be a good solution.  


John

My SIL wants to wrap some metal posts with wood using a splined miter joint.  The posts are 8' tall.  Should the spline be one long piece?  Does it need to run full length or can he use several small splines perhaps 6" in length?

I know many people use a lock miter joint but he doen't have that ability.  Thanks for the help.

Lonnie

I am literally asking 'for a friend'.   He asks:  "What is a good table top jointer?   I do not want to go to Harbor Frieght".   Thoughts?

Got tired of hunting every time I needed one. Used melamine (would not recommend) and scraps of maple, glued with Roo Glue. French cleat to hang on the wall.

I have a LT table saw, and was cutting some 45 deg miters for the sides of a box.

I did the cuts with my miter gauge with a longer (sacrificial) auxiliary fence and a stop block.  So the piece was trapped between the tilted blade and the stop block.

The pieces were 8" to 14" long, so my fleshy bits were far from the blade.

Everything went smoothly, and the miters were the best I ever cut, but I had a nagging feeling I was doing something dumb, kickback-wise.

Was I?  Should I have rearranged the cut by using the miter gauge on the right side of the blade, and the blade tilted away from the "keeper" part of my workpiece?

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/tls/d/s...04751.html

[font="Bitstream Vera Serif", "Times New Roman", serif]Dewalt Radial Arm saw with bench and blades. Must pick up.[/font]


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