Hey guys,

I've been keeping an eye out on Craigslist daily for about 6 months now for a decent deal on a cabinet saw. A model 34-461 was posted today and the guy is asking $600 for it. It has a 1.5HP motor which I believe may have been the smallest offered. From what I found on owwm.org, this model looks to have been made around 1975.

Fence looks pretty plain-jane...not a Biesmeyer. It is a right tilt but I don't do much beveling of wide pieces where I would need to have the workpiece "pinched" to the right side of the blade.

He bought it as a package deal with some other Rockwell/Delta equipment. He hasn't even run it since bringing it home but the original owner fired it up for him when he bought it and he said it seemed to run smoothly and the adjustments seem tight. I have a decent mechanical inclination so I'm not scared off if I have to replace bearings or something like that. He says it has been well cared for...not used a heck of a lot but kept up enough that it hasn't just sat around and allowed to rust. It's a pretty good trek for me to go see it so I can't confirm any of this, and with gas being $4 a gallon I don't want to make the trip without the opinions of you guys that are more knowledgeable.

From searching on this forum, I get the sense that his asking price is on the high side. But my weakness is I've got the itch to get a real saw and I've seen only one other decent saw come up on CL in the last six months. I've been using a $150 B&D special from Lowes, and as hard as it may be to believe, I turn out some pretty precise work with it, having invested some time in a ZCI, a couple of crosscut sleds, and various other jigs.

Now that I'm needing to articulate exactly why I want a real saw, I think it comes down mostly to dadoing. The arbor on my current saw is limited to a 3/8" stack which is pretty restrictive, well almost useless when I want to get uniform dadoes for 3/4" stock. Too time consuming to sneak up on the fit with multiple passes. And the height adjustment has some play in it that I think is the cause of my rough dado bottoms. The blade doesn't move in the downward direction but I can see it bounce upward if the dado stack is unbalanced (scary). So even with the stack balanced, I expect it is doing the same as the blade experiences changes in resistance when going through varying grain patterns, especially in plywood.

I expect many will say the first thing I need to factor in is the cost of getting a more powerful motor and a good fence. I tend to agree on the fence but I'm not so sure about the motor assuming it's in good working order. The cheapie saw I'm using has a 2hp motor (or so it says) and I've run some 6/4 oak through it without bogging it. That's about the toughest cut I make on the table saw, and that's pretty rare. But if there's some way I can use the 1.5 horse to upgrade my Rockwell bandsaw's 3/4 horse, then I probably would upgrade the tablesaw eventually. I do bog the bandsaw down on a regular basis with resaws.

Anyway, if you've read this far, please accept my gratitude. I didn't intend to write so much when I sat down.

What do you think I should do? Try to talk him down? Wait for a better deal? Or buy it and don't look back?