I really like Hartville Tools (www.hartvilletool.com).  They appear to be a small, family-owned company but their pricing is very competitive.  And they’re real winners on customer service.  They give you a year to return any item, even if you simply don’t like it.

I recently ordered a Norton 3X grinding wheel from Hartville that was so out of balance that my Oneway Balancer couldn’t overcome it.  So I shipped it back to Hartville.  And not only did I quickly receive the replacement, they also credited my account with the cost of the return shipping!

I suppose you could argue that it’s only right they did that, but many companies don’t.  Kudos to Hartville!

Last month I upgraded my Grizzly jointer to a new serpentine belt.  At the time I wondered if a simple belt upgrade would have been just as good.  Well, I finally got curious enough to try it out and found that I was right, just changing to a high-quality belt was actually slightly better than the serpentine kit.

I was using the SawStop to cut some small dados this morning when it suddenly refused to start.  The blinking lights indicated that the brake cartridge was out of position.  After an hour of adjusting and puzzling, I finally deduced the real problem.  I was using a blade that had been recently sharpened and, because of the smaller diameter, I had to adjust the riving knife down so that the dado bottom (top) would clear it.  (adjusting the riving knife height is, by the way, a major pain).  I finally set the riving knife clamp to it’s lowest setting to ensure it would clear.  But at that position, the clamp is so close to the frame of the brake cartridge that the cartridge’s electronics see it as a blade being too close.  After adjusting the clamp up by one tooth, that gave it enough clearance so the cartridge would allow the saw to start again.

What puzzles me, however, is why the saw ran several times before seeing the riving knife clamp.  Maybe sawdust that vibrated out?

I need to get a planer, but money’s a little tight right now.  So I decided to take a shot at using a portable planer instead of a heavier model.  So I picked up a Dewalt DW735 at Lowes, $650 with tax.

After about 10 minutes, I packed it up and returned it.  It’s unbelievably loud and kinda cheap-feeling.  For a few hundred dollars more I can get a Grizzly 15″ planer, which is the way I’m heading.  I may just bite the bullet and get the helical head model.  Either way, I’ll get a vastly better planer for not that much more money.

Last year I was shopping for a new router and heard many wonderful things about Triton routers.  Unfortunately, Triton was experiencing some sort of organizational or financial issues and the Triton routers were no longer on the market.

However, Triton was recently bought out by HTC and the routers were back, albeit backlogged.  I finally got one through my local WoodCraft dealer and got a chance to take it for a test drive.  While it will ultimately live in a router table, I found it to be pretty nice for handheld work.  It’s well-balanced, lots of power, and height changes are fast and easy.

There are some things I don’t like.  While the height control (Triton calls it a winder) makes it very easy to change the height, it also feels very cheap.  I’m concerned about it’s long-term reliability.  I also find the power switch to be very clumsy. And the “soft start” is still kinda sudden, my Freud FT3000VCE has a much better soft start.

Regardless of my reservations, I’m seriously considering selling the Freud and getting a second Triton.  Changing heights on the Freud is painfully slow and I love how fast it is on the Triton.

I really hate mobile bases, I’ve never used one that didn’t make the tool wobbly.  So I’ve been working on this “mobile platform” for my new SawStop.  I’ve had this idea for a while and I figured I may as well try it out with the new saw.  Basically just some 2×4s jointed and planed square, then glued together into blocks and mounted under some 3/4″ birch ply.  The tunnels allow the forks of a standard pallet jack to slide in and move it around very easily, then it sits down solidly.  However, since the concrete guys did a relatively poor job on this are of the slab, I’ll need to add some leveling feet.  But even now, it’s pretty solid and way better than my old Jet mobile base.  The extra area will give me a place to mount the power cutoff and maybe some other storage.  I also really like the way it raises the top to 37″, I find I’m most comfortable with my work surfaces at 37-39″.

The new SawStop is emitting a really shrill whiny noise.  I’ve tried several different blades, including the SawStop blade that came with it, with no difference.  What I’ve found is there seems to be some interaction between blade and the zero clearance insert (ZCI).  If I remove the ZCI the noise goes away.  Likewise, if the blade is below the ZCI there is no whine. The higher the blade is above the ZCI worse the noise is.

The sound is incredibly irritating, even with full hearing protection on.  Hopefully SawStop can shed some light on this.

After nine days of delays and alignment hassles, I finally got to make the first cut on my new PCS. Even with a makeshift fence, it’s a very nice-cutting saw. I ran some very chipout-prone birch ply through it and got a very clean cut, the ZCI is very effective. Very little dust escaped the guard. I need to break out the sound meter, but my initial impression is that it’s noticeably quieter than the Grizzly.

I hope to finish my mobile platform and get the Incra fence on it by the end of the week, then set up permanent dust collection and get started on extension and outfeed tables!

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I have my SawStop table aligned.

Tricks learned:  Back off the bolts exactly one turn from their tightened position.  Get two 4mm hex wrenches so you can keep one in each adjustment screw, they’re a pain to get in.  Once you’re aligned, slowly snug each alignment screw tighter, alternating between them and watching the dial indicator.  Then evenly retighten the bolts 1/4 turn at a time in a crossing pattern.

Other tricks learned:  The 0° stop is useless, coming up against it twists the trunion out of alignment, set the stop at about -2° and back up to zero.  Always approach your angle setting from the same low to high to keep the alignment consistent.

Above all, build a sturdy holder for the dial indicator and learn how to position it consistently.

Someday, I’ll write a more formal tutorial on all this.  For now, I’m happy to have the blade aligned to about a half-thousandth.

I’ve owned my new $3000 SawStop for almost a week now and it has yet to be powered up. Why? Because so many little issues with it. But the major thing is the alignment of the blade with the top. It arrived .008 out of alignment, which is 4x what’s acceptable. Aligning the top on the saw looks like it’s well thought-out, it’s different than any other saw I’ve seen. But the saw is whacky in ways I’ve never seen before. If you tilt the blade on any saw tight against the stop it will cause some misalignment, but the SawStop seems particularly sensitive to this. Also, the blade alignment can vary by as much as .002 depending on which direction you came from. For example, I was checking the alignment at 30°. I found that if I went from 20° to 30°, it out by .001. But if I went up to 40° and then back down to 30°, it was now out by .003! So now I have to make sure I adjust it so it’s -.001 from one direction and +.001 in the other.

Hopefully with a few more hours work I can actually turn it on …