Post #969824

I see an awful lot of Saw•Stop table saws on YouTube videos; I’ve never used one. Last I checked (it’s been a while), their jobsite model was going for something like $895 - which is nearly 3x what I paid for this Skil, brand new. It’d be truly amazing if I could justify the higher price; but I only have “remember-not-to-touch-flesh/clothing-to-the-whirling-blade-of-doom” kind of money. So aside from the obvious fact of safety being the utmost priority in a table saw, I’d say mobility is my primary concern. I need to be able to throw the thing into my Mini Cooper, and take it to wherever they’re paying me to go. But it also really needs to not suck, as it’s probably going to be my only table saw - as one of my cousins got Grandpa’s since I already had this one while he had zero. I’m extremely impressed with the value this model represents. It has an excellent rack-and-pinion rip fence; which can attach functionally on either side of the blade. I’d never had that feature, before. I mean I had a rack-and-pinion rip fence but it wasn’t able to adjust on the left side by the knob (had to manually clamp it where I wanted it if doing left-handed ripping). Also, surprisingly, the blade guard that everybody takes off is very well engineered, and came in handy when I was ripping bamboo flooring strips. The adjustable folding legs are shockingly sturdy, for their relative lightness. It‘s a 120v 15-amp, so I doubt plowing through say four-inch oak planks would be fun - but it did perfectly fine ripping 4”x4” pressure treat. My only complaint; the darn thing sounds like a jumbo jet during takeoff, for how loud it is. It’s comparable to that woodchipper I just posted about. This can be a problem; sometimes I need a table saw at 3:00AM. This didn’t occur to me when I first bought it. I can move it into the shed I suppose, but sometimes that defeats the whole purpose of a jobsite saw. Still, at least I can move it in there easily enough, if the floor isn’t covered with crap Nevertheless, in spite of its acoustic shortcomings, this jobsite saw very much strikes a chord with me. It just does what I want it to do, (almost) whenever I want it to. 9.5 out-of-10, would recommend to a friend that wants/needs a table saw with any hope of being moved around once in a while.