Buying a bench-saw.

[jess marley]

Seeing as we are going to have to make the gates for the yard, and everything else besides, could I have some advice/recommendations regarding:
1/bench saws and/or other tools likely to make the going a touch easier.
2/sourcing good timber, what kind to use, or could I buy reclaimed and cut it down?
Thanking you as ever, j.

 

[middi]

Jess, If you want to buy a benchsaw you have to evaluate what is it likely to be used for in the future and what type of woodworking you intend to tackle.

A small benchsaw can be purchased from about £ 100 and gradually working up in prize and quality untill the sky is the limit, if you need it mainly for the gates and other future "odd" jobs it may be better to purchase planed and sized joinery timber from any reasonable building merchant.

IF you are adamant that you want a "tablesaw", you should be able to get a reasonable powered quality to start with for about £300, whether you buy an £ 100 or £ 3000 tablesaw all you ever end up with is wood which reduced to size that will eventually needs to be planed and squared up in order to construct anything of a reasonable quality.

You would need a small planer/ticknesser for that, unless you intend to do a reasonable amount of woodworking buying presized wood is the cheaper option.

You can certainly build a gate and tackle other woodworking jobs, if you take your time, with a reasonable quantity of hand tools complemented with an electric drill, a small electric planer and a circular saw, ater all there are brilliant examples of joinery constructed before electricity.

As to using reclaimed wood, this is possible but not advisable, usually tools get ruined by unseen nails etc..., as you intend to make the gates yourself it would be better , cheaper and easier to obtain joinery quality softwood ( usually pine variety) as this is stocked by most building merchants, it will give you a nice practice run and should last well if you maintain it. You should be able to buy the wood for about £60/£70.

You can always build a lovely oak one when you are fed up with you previous effort, You should be a seasoned " gate builder" by then.

 

[jess marley]

Thanks middi.
I should add that I'm using the personal pronoun rather loosely here as it's Charlie who will be doing most of the joinery, I'm much better at plastering, pointing etc...
I can say that he WILL be doing a considerable amount of joinery as we have also the kitchen and library to fit out, plus assorted built in cupboards.
He's pretty skilled already, ( not in a Biff sense you understand ) but we both think we may require bigger guns now,....would need a thicknesser at least as the timber is odd/old sizes.
I'm really not sure about softwood though, it really is very, very wet here.

 

[biffvernon]

If you spend more money, you find you are tempted to recover the investment by doing jobs for others and before you know it you have becomes skilled, given up the day job and have embarked on a new carreer.
http://www.axminster.co.uk/category-Axminster-Plus-Saw-Benches-207974.htm

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

If you have the space, and the money, then investing in good woodworking kit will certainly give you the potential to produce your own high quality joinery, to your own standards and in your own time. It also frees you from the hassle of having to work around off-the-shelf stock sizes, and some of the problems of sourcing decent quality timber. Beware of reclaimed timber, unless you can be certain that it's free from nails etc.

I did a lot of my early renovation work here with hand tools and a router, but the real breakthrough came when I invested in a planer / thicknesser. Suddenly I could produce finished timber in any section, and save ££s by buying sawn stock rather than planed.

For working "tree wood" rather than sheet materials you will find that a medium sized bandsaw is a versatile alternative to the table saw. Not only do you get a greater depth of cut, but of course curves are no problem. If you can stretch to one that will take an 18 or 25mm blade then you're sorted for fast ripping work.

A decent 1/2" router is essential in my opinion for joint cutting and running mouldings.

With those three items on board, plus some decent hand tools, you've got the capability to turn out most domestic joinery. Of course, you can get a machine or power tool to do every imaginable task, but if you're just doing your own work then the outlay will be hard to justify. OK, you can have a decent sander.

For items that are going to get a lot of use it really is worth getting the best that you can afford. Serious trade-rated equipment will last longer, work more effectively, and be nicer and safer to use than DIY toys. Bear in mind that something like a 10" planer will often be working at it's limits even on domestic projects, so it needs to be decent quality.

Suppliers: find your local woodworking machinery stockist so that you can go and see things in the flesh. Rutlands and Axminster provide the glossy catalogues for browsing what's available. Router cutters - Wealden.

Don't under-rate your hand tools; often quicker, quiteter and just as effective. If I had to give just one bit of advice it would be master the art of sharpening. Since I read Toshio Odate's book on Japanese tools, and started using waterstones to sharpen my edge tools I've been elevated to an almost spiritual plane (pun fully intended).

Re: timber, you need to look around for the right supplier. Try the bigger builders merchants by all means, but probably you want the specialist timber merchants - see the Yellow Pages. If you can find the right material and get service with a smile then well done - it's a rare thing.

Something like close-grained redwood would be fine for your gates I feel. If you have a really good look at how the old ones have failed you'll see that good design is almost more imortant than choice of timber species. Classic faults to look for are through tenons which soak up water, rusted fastenings which split the surrounding timber, and poor detailing leading to water being trapped in odd corners instead of running off.
Bear in mind the weight increase if you move to something like oak. Good maintenance will prevent future decay.
Keep us posted on your project!

 

[middi]

Right, if your Charlie is going to tackle all those jobs you mentioned and perhaps other joinery work such as doors, maybe the " odd" window, and other general woodwork finishing, and there is some confidence about using woodworking machinery, it is probably better and much, much cheaper to spend about £2500 or £3000 to equip yourselves with light industrial woodworking machinery if you have the room, such as a combination machine which includes sawbench, planer thicknesser and spindle molder, this in conjunction a bench moticer and basic woodworking tools including hand power tools should save you thousands in labour.

Once you have finished the project and Charlie is fed up with woodworking ( unlikely!!), you sell off the main machine and probably get two thirds of the money back.

As to what type of wood you use that very much depends on the depth of your pockets, joinery "redwood" is readily available and quite cheap but higher maintenanace and shorter life than ,say, douglas fir or cedar, these have resistance to rot and last longer, at three times the price.

There is of course the expensive imported " hardwoods" from Asia, I would not consider these primarely for ecologigal reasons and secondly some rot just as quick as ordinary joinery woods.

For long lasting properties there is not much better than using oak in this country, green oak is actually cheaper than cedar or douglas fir but not very good for good joinery work, it distorts as it seasons. If you need straight quality work you would need well seasoned oak ( or kiln dried), this is more expensive.


If you are in no absolute rush, buy the green oak and store it in a well ventilated place for about 2/3 years and then use it, you will save 50% of the purchase cost.

Good luck.

 

[Lime]

Several interesting posts I'm pleased to say.

The trouble with "proper" wood working machines is that they require so much space.
For someone with just a shed it really has to be dedicated to woodwork or very large to accommodate everything else!

 

[thiambal]

Stay clear of the Clarke/Machine Mart cheap table saw (also found with other brand names and sold through e-bay). It cuts ok but the fences are poor fitting and innacurate.

If you look on the DIYnot.com site there was a post some time ago where a table saw for £140ish was recommended as the best budget buy. Might have been Ryobi but I am not sure.

Personally I would consider whether you can get away with a compound mitre saw rather than a table saw. How often will you use the extra functions that a table saw will offer?

 

[jess marley]

Thanks all,
Luckily, we have room for a good set up as one of the sitting rooms is dedicated to workshop space at the mo' and we tend to live in the kitchen.
I'm very wary of not spending enough and wearing out motors that just aren't big enough, a mistake we've made too many times.
I agree that all this can all be done by hand, and if the alternative is using flimsy, innaccurate machine tools it's better that it should. In the past, this is what we've done, but now we do have the space to spread out a bit, I'd like to see Charlie better provided for and a little less exhausted by the whole endevour.
Oh, and thanks again BIFF for the pointer to Hasluck all those months ago. The gates featured on p.321 and 322 are almost identical in construction to ours.
I can't see that we will get any use out of a spindle-mouder, as our house doesn't do curves, or any other of life's little luxuries, but we certainly need a thicknesser, would a combination machine do both jobs well enough? Or is it better to buy each tool individually do you think?

 

[middi]

The main reason for buying combination machines is that they save space as opposed to individually standing machines, depending on the quality they all work equally well.

For a planer thicknesser which needs to work longer lengths of wood, the cheap DIY ones are not suitable, the longer the feed bed on the planer the more accurate the end product, also a cast iron bed is more accurate. Just a couple of points to bear in mind.

Like anythingelse in life you usually get what you pay for.

As to spindle molder usage, this is not only used for curved work, it can be used for those unusual straight profiles which you cannot readily buy or when a router is just not big enough to do it. Admittedly this is not a priority in the DIY woodworking shop.

With a good quality table saw and a good quality planer thicknesser , plus the average quantity of other hand portable tools, should keep any woodworker happy and a lot of good work can be achieved.

 

[Gervase]

I'd love a spindle moulder for making staff beads - it's almost impossible to find the classic Victorian staff beads any more.

 

[thiambal]

Luckily I can get hold of staff beads. But A spindle moulder has allowed me to custom make a number of simple mouldings that are not avaliable to buy.

 

[biffvernon]

I'm really not into gadgets, or the things that gadgets produce. I'd say the priority is a decent saw with a sliding table. The sliding table makes a world of difference.

Planers and thicknessers are always less powerful than you want.

 

[jess marley]

biff,
many thanks for your advice; it seems a decent bench saw is the only way forward. My only dilemma is what price bracket to be in. I know the advantages of a quality machine having used one some years ago is a workshop, and the frustration of struggling to work accurately on a cheap machine.
Your link to the Axminster catalogue has pointed to several possibilities. Could I ask you to advise specifically on their range of products? Axminster Plus AP315 looks like an ideal machine. Would I be a fool to go cheaper? Jet JTS-250 CS is rated as for trade use; what accounts for the £1000 difference in price, is it accuracy, dutrability? Is this really a good quality small trade machine that might be good value for money, or an overpriced DIY toy which is a waste of time? Perform CC10BSB is vastly cheaper, and the sliding table mechanism looks substantial. Its depth of cut etc are comparable to the others, (and width to fence is greater) and it is a weighty piece of kit, but is it really just a waste of money?
I would be very greatful if you could advise.
Also, would I be right in thinking that the other important piece of kit would be a table for my router (leaving aside the clearly contraversial subject of thicknessing for the moment)?
Many thanks,
Charlie.

 

[NT]

You can get 100cuft assorted oak for £230 on ebay. If I had more woodwork to do I'd go for that.


NT

 

[biffvernon]

That's about a tenth of what I pay! It might be the bargain of the century or it might be some slightly expensive firewood. I'm not putting in a bid.

 

[biffvernon]

Jess

From Axminster, the AW10BSB2 Saw Bench at £579.94 looks very cheap, but it doesn't seem to say how powerful the motor is.

The Rojek PK315 Saw Bench at £1,637.81 but you must add the Rojek CV1BX Sliding Table at £399.66 and the Rojek 1500mm Right Hand Extension Table at £139.88

Don't forget you MUST have a chip/dust extractor to go with any sawbench.

The Scheppach TS2500Ci Circular Saw Bench at £1,359.00 from Machine Mart looks like my one with a change of paint colour. Mine's a Kitty but they went out of business a couple of years ago. Maybe Scheppach took over this model. I'm very satisfied with mine and this one looks like the same good value for money.

As, I said, I'm not really into gadgets so I'm probably not the best one to give advice but if I find that my saw has been stolen over night I would phone MachineMart and order the Scheppach today.

Scheppach from MachineMart

 

[joatex]

Biffstates "Don't forget you MUST have a chip/dust extractor to go with any sawbench. " I'd add ANY woodworking machinery
Can't be emphasised enough. Naso-pharyngeal carcinoma has a silent approach but is deadly, so unexpected.

 

[biffvernon]

Yes, I use a cheap chip extractor on the sawbench and an air filter in the room. Plus the door is usually wide open so it's as if I was outdoors.

As for a router table - I havn't got one so I don't think they're important. Perhaps if I did have one I would discover they are essential.

 

[skier-hughes]

That's about a tenth of what I pay! It might be the bargain of the century or it might be some slightly expensive firewood. I'm not putting in a bid.

If it's the one I've seen on ebay it is from Henry Venables in Stafford, it's good Oak, but offcuts, so is all sorts of sizes. They also do premium, character and something else grades and this is mixed in the pallet. I looked into buying some for our kitchen, but we needed too much of certain sizes I was going to have lots of odd bits left over and have to order in more, which may not have matched so I decided against it.

I've bought Oak from them and my father in law loves it.