Overdone outfeed? Advice needed

That's a neat idea Jerry. I'm fast becoming convinced that I need to put some more practical storage beneath my TS extension. A roll around cart like yours also makes a lot of sense. Maybe I could combine the ideas?

Rennie Heuer said:

That's a neat idea Jerry. I'm fast becoming convinced that I need to put some more practical storage beneath my TS extension. A roll around cart like yours also makes a lot of sense. Maybe I could combine the ideas?

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Rennie,

I had a similar problem, with an additional concern: my shop floor is *far* from level. There was no question of building a rolling cabinet like Jerry's, since depending on the position and orientation of the saw, there could be several inches difference in the actual height of the end of a long outfeed piece. My only real solution was to build a very large (8' x 4') torsion box on casters, and build a tablesaw cabinet up from that. At the back of the saw, there's a gap that lets me get to the belt and motor, and then about 8" of plywood at the same level as the saw table. At it's edge, I'm about two feet past the front of the blade. That same ply forms the top of a "cabinet", so if I need more outfeed for long rips, I can open the doors, lay a wider piece of ply across their tops, and rip away. The router table takes up the right hand side of the whole thing.

It has so far worked pretty well, but one of the points was having four feet to the right of the blade. Since I got the festool, I really don't need that much anymore. And the thing's a beast, heavy and stubborn to move around. With the unlevel floor, its not like I can push the thing with one finger. I've been thinking about cutting two feet off the router table side, but there are a few problems with that. 1. The thing was a lot of work to build. 2. It would be a lot of work to rebuild! 3. I count on the storage it gives me under the router table. 4. As soon as I took all that trouble, I'd need the extra space again!

I realize this isn't exactly analogous to your situation, but you might be able to use the "open cabinet doors and lay a piece of plywood across them" trick to give you rarely used but sometimes sorely needed outfeed room...

Thanks,

Bill
(ps. works on the infeed side too... I did that out of necessity: there's nothing quite like being partway through a cut on a big sheet of plywood and having your roller stands fall over! Don't ask me how I know...

Wow, Rennie, what a mess. Thank heaven, I'm not the only one.

My shop is small (dedicated 2-1/2 car garage), but mainly I knew what machines I wanted so there had to be floor space for them...this meant I couldn't allocate a large central area for a tablesaw and all the attached support to permit cutting full sheets. I rarely do that anyway since I work mostly with solid wood. So I did what Jerry did and set it about 4' from one of the overhead doors. This allows me to mostly rip with the door closed, but when necessary I can open it (not much fun in the winter). When I do need to cut a full sheet I use a Festool plunge-cut circular saw with guide...very accurate saw...often it isn't necessary to repeat the cut on the TS. I did need an outfeed table, though...any board longer than about 18" wanted to fall off the edge. There are a few sites out there with examples of shop-built drop-down outfeed tables (maybe here too...haven't looked), and I decided to do that. But I kept putting it off, and one day I looked on Amazon and there was a sale on the HTC roller outfeed table, free shipping, no tax, so I handed over my Visa number. I've been happy with it. Mostly it stays up unless I need to get back in the corner where my air compressor stands, but it only takes about 5 seconds to drop it down. I saw one user complaint that the guy couldn't get all the the rollers set exactly even...jeez, it's an outfeed table. It attaches to the base of the saw cabinet (drilling required), so an uneven floor isn't an issue. Two other things I did to my TS (btw, it's a Grizzly G1023...similar to your Jet) is attach an Exaktor sliding table to the left wing, and attach a router table with precision router lift to the right wing. So with the slider, the router table and the outfeed table, this is as big as I can tolerate in that space. So far it works well for me, even though the only thing that drops down is the outfeed table. I suppose you could say that there's enough support there to cut full sheets, but I can't do that. I always feed a little crooked, bind the blade, burn the sheet (and the air with invective), and one piece still manages to fall uncontrolled to the floor. So I gave up. Hence the Festool. I will never attempt it again. Feed the tool, not the sheet.

Cheers.

Thanks Ed - lots of good info in that post

I'm really looking hard at placing the router in an extension of the saw table - makes sense. Downsizing the outfeed table will also happen - just not sure yet how much, but hinging it to allow it to drop out of the way is also likely.

Yes - it's a mess - but - I just finished a week long vacation spending about 11 hours a day just finishing jobs around the house and fixing things that were broken. So, under those circumstances, the shop becomes a stopping point and a place to drop off the tools from one job while picking up the tools for the next. I usually don't have such a mess in the shop and I almost NEVER tolerate an unsafe condition like having the air hose coiling all over the floor. I had just finished trimming a door and had just pulled the hose in from the other end of the house prior to taking the pictures. Art wanted recent picture and I thought, "why not?"