I recently posted a query asking if I "needed" to upgrade from a contractor's saw to a cabinet saw. The general consensus was no, but that I should anyway. Never one to ignore sage advice, I recently purchased a PCS SawStop. I moved the Jessem sliding table & Benchdog router table from my existing saw to the new saw. So far I have been very happy with this setup, and thought I might share a few thoughts about the experience. The fit and finish are excellent, as is the documentation and packaging. The sliding table and router extension table fit without modification, and the saw was setup very close to perfect as shipped. The tables are flat as close as I can measure; parallelism of the blade to the miter slot was dead on, and the fence and miter gauge only needed minor tweaking to be dialed in. The face of the fence is flat, and dust collection is excellent. Most of my setup time involved modifications I made to the saw, which are detailed below, along with a rather long winded accounting of the setup experience. Unless you are planning on making any of these modifications, you may want to skip the rest of this post.
The first impression was that they charge you for delivery: $175 to the dealer, $250 to your door. I don't understand why it should cost more to deliver to a residential address or why you can't order the PCS or ICS online. In any event, if you are doing a price comparison add $175 - $250 to the cost. I upgraded to the industrial mobile base and purchased a base conversion kit, spare brake, dado brake, and dado insert. With taxes this was ~ $4K out the door. I was told delivery would be ~ 1 week, it arrived in two weeks.
I was planning on borrowing my neighbor's trailer to pick up the saw. Unfortunately, when I got the call the saw had arrived said trailer was full of another neighbor's tree trimmings. I wanted my new toy, so I set out with the pickup truck. SawStop was running a promotion: a free mobile base or free above the table dust collection system. The Woodcraft dealer talked me into the industrial mobile base so I chose the latter. My shop is a two car garage and I'm space-challenged, so tool mobility is important. When I arrived to pick up the saw the dust collection option was not there. I was told I needed to fill out a rebate form which required the serial number of the saw. I did this and it was delivered in 1 week. I mention this because I do not recommend assembling the saw without the mobile base (see below). I would plan on 3-4 weeks for delivery if you want to take advantage of the promotion.
At this point the challenge was getting it out of the truck. The main box was on a pallet, and contained the saw, extension wings, handles, hardware, etc. I cut the top off the box and removed everything except the saw and cast iron top. This reduced the weight to something I could slide on the pallet. I had an old solid core door I used to use as a bench top. I pried up the edge of the pallet with a piece of pipe and had my wife slide the door under the pallet. I then slid the door forward to where it was on the tipping point of the tailgate. I tied a couple of loops of rope securing the saw to the pallet, ran a safety line to the lumber rack, and pulled the door past the tipping point. The saw slid slowly 2/3's of the way down the ramp, and I was easily able to support the weight while my wife belayed the line the rest of the way.
You will need a conversion kit if you purchase the industrial mobile base, as it was designed for the ICS which is 3" deeper. Be advised it is assembled with Loctite or the equivalent; it took the better part of an hour and the application of heat to free one stubborn bolt. The instructions tell you to flip the saw over, stand it up, get 4 friends to lift the saw, then have a 5th person slide the mobile base in place. I recommend calculating the height you want the saw to be, cut a plywood base to raise it if needed (plywood needs to be ~ 19" x 19 1/4" w/minor curves to accommodate the front curvature), add cleats to fit inside the frame, attach the base, then raise the saw. This is easily accomplished with two people. The instructions do state to assemble the base before raising the saw; however, they do not recommend installing the base before raising the saw. Fortunately, this was the only flaw I found in the documentation. The base itself is very heavy duty: the four rotating castors let it move freely, it raises the saw ~uniformly on a plane, and it lowers to the floor to provide stability.
At this point I was able to clean off the packing grease and take a look at what I'd bought. Fit and finish looked very good, and I can honestly say the instruction manual is the best I've ever seen: Well written, clear, spiral bound and in color, no less, obviously written by an English speaker knowledgeable in the product. They give you color coded blister packs with bolts, washers, etc. clearly labeled; I was not missing any parts.
The switch bracket is designed to mount on the inside of the left extension table, which I was going to replace with the sliding table, so I needed to fabricate a bracket to mount the switch on the inside of the main top. After scrounging around the garage I made a bracket
out of some heavy gauge aluminum which worked quite well. Later, when I cut the L bracket to support the front rail, I realized I was looking at some excellent material to be used for fabricating this bracket: as usual, my hindsight is 20-20
Taking a hacksaw to the rails of a brand new saw is only painful for the first cut: I got best results using a hacksaw to cut a V grove and then a SawsAll with a metal cutting blade. I cleaned up the edges with a file; perhaps someday I’ll add some black paint to the edges to cover up the misdeed. I can’t remember the last time I used the fence on the left side of the blade, but I use the sliding table all the time. I needed slightly longer bolts to attach the sliding table.
The Benchdog router table was also a bolt on proposition: I used through bolts with heavy washers on each side, lock washers, and a nut since the threads/ hole sizes of the existing bolts were not a good match. In hindsight, drilling and tapping threaded holes would probably have made alignment easier. The cabinet provides support when the saw is lowered; when raised, the top and router raise independently of the cabinet which rests on castors and is attached to the top using overlong bolts. Yes, now that you mention it, the cabinet was hastily slapped together from scrap as a “prototype”, it’s ugly as sin but works quite well. I think the over the table dust collection will work too, I just left the bolts slightly loose so it rotates down when using the router table. The saw came with a carbide blade: it seemed noisy and I wasn't happy with the quality of my test cuts. Replacing the blade with a WWII fixed both these problems.
Overall, I’m very happy with this setup, and am looking forward to many years of projects.
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Originally Posted by Dave Anthony
