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Skilsaw Tablesaw - 120v - Glad to Have It

glenn bradley

glenn bradley

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My son in law came across a saw setting out in the weather behind a building where he was doing some work. Got it for free and knew I was without 220v power and scrounged it for me. I should have taken before pictures. Even though it is a Chinese plastic tablesaw, it will let me do some things more quickly that I had been doing by hand. Here it is after an afternoon of love and care. Nothing could help the fact that the plastic housing had faded from Skil red to a soft pink . . . how sweet :D.

Skilsaw TS-1.jpg

It has a riving knife of sorts but, no fence and non-standard miter slots. I made a quick fence from a parallel clamp and a piece of milled scrap.

Skilsaw TS-2.jpg . Skilsaw TS-3.jpg

I used this same method (with a Bessey UniKlamp and a high/low profile wood piece) on an old 1970's Delta Milwaukee bandsaw I had for awhile. Safety is the main challenge. I will need to measure from the front and rear of the blade to assure parallelism before ripping anything if I don't want to end up wearing the board for a hat :D. I have to confess that after getting used to a saw weighing hundreds of pounds this thing scares me. Stand and all it might tip the scales at 40 pounds.

My hope is that it will let me get a head start on some cleat fixtures and blast gates. The last thing I want to do is get injured on this rickety little guy so safety accessories and double-checks will be my priority when setting up an operation.
 
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My first table saw was...well, it wasn't mine, but my all thumbs dad's..a cheap circular mounted under some sort of cheap metal saw horse contraption, but it was great at cutting...fingers off? (My father (bless him) was all but useless around tools of any kind and would fall for any non-working tool shortcut on the market. luckily for the old man I'm pretty good with tools and he managed to just die of old age instead of some disastrous tool accident. The next was an ancient crapsman 8 inch made in the 1930s. The ancient motor was mounded on a mostly brazed pile of scrap iron and I had to get it running by pulling on the belt..No fence.. but it would cut through just about anything I put through it..
Next was a Ryobi finger eater/utterly useless POS and finally a craftsman aluminum top motorized deal I added an Align-A-Rip fence to. The craftsman aluminum has actually been a pretty darn good saw for several years, but it's about to give up the ghost and I'm in the market for a cabinet saw somewhere or a better Craftsman cast iron with an external motor, but timing is everything because I have nowhere to stash the old one if I get another so the plan is to either trade it or buy another better saw and either junk this one or sell it before the rain comes..

Just keep your piddy pats out of the way of the spinning blade of that Skilsaw.. I've been bitten twice in my life. I'm glad to announce it's not nearly as much fun as seen on TV. In fact, it downright hurts after your nerve endings catch up with your brain.
 
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Got the riving knife tuned up. Some conscientious person appears to have flipped the saw on its head during its previous life . . . with the RK up. I took the assembly out and the mounting bracket was bent. I figured out pretty quick why I couldn't get it to align along its length :D. A little squeeze in the vice and a coupe of precision percussive inducements with a small sledge and I got the bracket back to 90 degrees. Aligning the RK reminded me of aligning a contractor saw blade to miter slot; align, tighten . . . nope, loosen nudge, tighten . . . nope, loosen, etc. until I finally got it.

I setup the fence and double-double checked. Ripped a 3" strip off a piece of ply. Pretty good result except for some tooth marks that appeared due to a minor feed path deviation when the whole saw started to slide across the floor. I'll have to use it out in the dirt or figure out a way to hold the things still while using it. Overall a success though so I'll take a break.
 
+1 on the fence.

When I had a similarly built saw I hung about 60lbs of sand in a couple of sandbags under it to help the stability some. It wasn't perfect but like you say better than nothing for sure.
 
So, this saw scares the pee-wad outta me on almost every cut. It is like the tablesaw equivalent of the plastic body Skil jig saw I owned back in the 70's;
1970s Skil Jig Saw.jpg
a real 'jumping jack' of a tool.
I have Grandpa's 1950's 113.27520 that has been waiting to become a crosscut station or something like that. Dad went to work blowing out 70 years worth of who-knows-what.
Dad cleaning up.jpg
One nice thing about hand-me-downs in the Bradley Family is Grandpa took care of his tools. He inspired the same virtue in my dad and my dad managed to make a little bit of it stick to me. Case in point; the saw went from Grandpa to dad to me with the original manual and all the accessories.
113.27520-accessories.jpg
Hard to believe the plastic in that blade guard is still intact o_O.
Everything moves well with the exception of the arbor turning easily but with that feel that bearings get when there's 70 year old grease packing in them. We will do a bit of a breakdown (since we're bored) but, probably won't go much further than bearings. I have things soaking up lubricant as the arbor seems a little unwilling to jump right out of the casting now that the snap ring is off. I'll keep you posted. :)
 
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Darren Wright said:
Those jig saws almost made me not want to have one ever again, then I tried a friends Bosch! Oh man! Made me fall in love with a jigsaw again.

Tell Jim hello from me! :wave:
Click to expand...

A Bosch was also my introduction to the fact that a jig saw was an actual tool :D. I love my 1591.

Dad says "Hi" back and just left for his morning walk. He has a mile-plus route through the neighborhood and I join him every other day; he walks one route every day. Not bad for a guy who will be 95 just after Christmas. The wife and I involve him in anything he can do which includes chores around the house and beating us at cards :unsure:.
 
glenn bradley said:
I have Grandpa's 1950's 113.27520 that has been waiting to become a crosscut station or something like that. Dad went to work blowing out 70 years worth of who-knows-what.
One nice thing about hand-me-downs in the Bradley Family is Grandpa took care of his tools. He inspired the same virtue in my dad and my dad managed to make a little bit of it stick to me. Case in point; the saw went from Grandpa to dad to me with the original manual and all the accessories.
Click to expand...
Can''t say I have many regrets in this life, but the one I do have is that I didn't go through my dad's tools when he passed away and take what I wanted.... he also took care of the tools he had. His skil saw was one of the originals and over the years he has put several new cords on it and changed the brushes a few times, but it would cut perfectly true... he hated to let others use it on a job as that was the reason for all the new cords... people would set the saw down still spinning on the cord... come of his tools were old when he got them, but still in perfect condition. He didn't have a lot of power tools though. At the time of his death I didn't have much interest in wood working and am still one lousy carpenter... I like my lathe and that's about all I do in wood working.

Don't know if I'll pass many of mine down to my son... he has better tools than I do.
 
Great deal, Glenn and a great solution for the fence.

I wish I could sell my table saw. I have a Jet 1 3/4 HP cabinet saw with a 39" table that is taking up space in my shop. It comes with lots of accessories that I want to clear out.
 
Give Jim a big hello from me, too!

I have a Black & Decker cousin to that Skil jigsaw. (I think I still have it...I might have given it away by now.) Like others here, my Bosch showed me what a good Jigsaw is supposed to feel like.
 
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