Sliding table owner's regrets?

[Bas Pluim]

One thing to remember is that the footprint is related to the material you want to cut. For example, if you want to rip an 8' sheet on a unisaw, you need a foot for the blade, 8 feet in front of the blade, 8' behind the blade and a couple of extra feet to line things up; that's about 19 feet. If you want to trim the edge of an 8' sheet, you need 8+ feet to the left of the blade.

+1. G0623X owner, Goldilocks feelings with respect to slider size (just right!). Trimming large panels, straightlining rough stock, sheet goods, everything that used to be hard is now easy.

[Kelby Van Patten]

I have the Laguna 6' Pro series slider. No regrets.

A bigger one would be a problem. First, it wouldn't fit in my shop. Second, rip cutting becomes more awkward when the table extends too far past the front of the saw.

The 6' is also plenty large enough for me. You can cross-cut a full sheet of plywood on the sliding table. You can't rip a full sheet of plywood, but I generally don't need to do that anyway, and on those few occasions when I do, I simply use the rip fence the same way I would on a cabinet saw.

[Brent Ring]

+1. G0623X owner, Goldilocks feelings with respect to slider size (just right!). Trimming large panels, straightlining rough stock, sheet goods, everything that used to be hard is now easy.

+2 Go623X owner. No problems breaking sheet goods - I just flip it. Not perfect, but I plan for a little waste. Does everything else I ask it to. Has a learning curve if you are used to a regular table saw. But otherwise it is great!

[Mike Wilkins]

Plus one with Kelly, I also have the Laguna Pro 6" slider. This is the max size for my 16 X 24 shop and it has performed great. I can still rip just like a standard cabinet saw, but using the sliding table to edge a solid wood board is a great use for a slider. I rigged some Bessey hold-down clamps to hold the board for its travel through the blade. I think these shorter sliders were made just for the smaller shops. The pros do not have to worry about this with their warehouse size shops.

[Jeff Monson]

8' slider also, my shop is narrow so my J/P sits next to my slider. 90% of the time my outirgger is off the machine, at that point I move my j/p and install my outrigger. I have no regrets, I can rip a sheet of plywood without a jig. One thing to remember is a slider without the outrigger takes up no more width than a standard tablesaw. I thought long and hard, measured many times, before I purchased my machine as my shop is small. I'm very glad I ended up with a longer slider.

[Steve Milito]

8' slider also, my shop is narrow so my J/P sits next to my slider. 90% of the time my outirgger is off the machine, at that point I move my j/p and install my outrigger. I have no regrets, I can rip a sheet of plywood without a jig. One thing to remember is a slider without the outrigger takes up no more width than a standard tablesaw. I thought long and hard, measured many times, before I purchased my machine as my shop is small. I'm very glad I ended up with a longer slider.

What machine do you own?

[Jeff Monson]

What machine do you own?

I have a Felder KF700S, saw/shaper

[Chris Fournier]

It is important point to remember as has been pointed out that moving a full sheet over a TS pretty much takes up the same room as the slider. I only haul out the large "wagon" if I am doing full sheet work otherwise it hangs on the wall out of the way. My Cu 410 Elite is actually narrower than my old TS beside my 12" jointer planer set up yet the J/P is 16", bonus. The mitre accessory does 80 percent of my cross cutting work and it is compact.

At first ripping gave me fits due to the slider being in the way for my usual TS stance. I am used to this now but it is one drawback over the TS for ripping so I'd say 10 steps forward, 1 step back.

[Erik Loza]

One of my customers in Brooklyn has a very limited space but needed a long slider with scoring. He has one of our 8.5' saws but had a machine shop bob off most of the round steel guide bar for the rip fence, so the machine can sit flush against the wall on the right side. Can still rip and crosscut panels just fine and as others have pointed out, he removes the frame table and outrigger and just uses the accessory short mitre fence a lot of the time. His machine is actually narrower in footprint that the cabinet saw it replaced.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Frank Drew]

My short stroke (53") saw was such an improvement over any non-slider I'd ever used that I was one happy camper, and I used sheet good so infrequently that I really never missed the capacity of a full-size machine. I wouldn't have minded a bigger shop though!

[Richard Scholl]

I have an 8'+ slider (MiniMax) in a two car garage, with the saw positioned with the infeed end toward the garage door, and about 4 ft from the door. If I need to use the full 8' stroke, I open the garage door. For the few times I use it, the 8' stroke is invaluable. If I had a shorter slider, there would be times I would sorely miss it.

[Richard McComas]

I have a 10' slider (not one single regret) It gives me room for an 8' sheet of plywood and an air clamp on both ends. Great setup for sheet good and straight line ripping.

[Jim Becker]

No regrets. Ever. About having the 8'6" wagon on my MM slider. Shorter would not suit my need for either working with solid stock or with sheet goods. If there was one thing I would change with my saw...and I actually plan on doing this...it will be to shorten the right-side table so I can move the machine to the right about a foot more to provide more room when I have the full outrigger on the machine. The only thing that right side table gets used for is for "stuff" and dust to sit on 99% of the time.

[johnny means]

+1 on Jim's comment about rip capacity. I never liked thst larger sliders have 5' of rip capacity. Sure larger production shops may work with 10 and 12' sheet goods all the time, but I could really use the extra space.

[ian maybury]

8ft Hammer K3 Perform and no regrets, even for smaller stuff where the slider length opens up the possibility of leaving e.g. two fence set ups in situ. The only downside i've found is that it takes up space, needs a little more walking around, and the start/stop buttons can be awkward to reach on occasion.

I'd have gone for an even longer slider and relied on opening the door for the longest of cuts if I had the choice again in that the Hammer 8ft slider (which just fitted in my shop) is just that, and it could use a bit more length for ease of clamping of long stuff etc. i.e it's literally 8ft long, not sized to handle an 8ft length.

I bought separates, but in retrospect the saw/shaper option may have a lot going for it especially on a long slider saw - should it be useful/needed it's not that realistic to have a long slider and fence on a shaper as well unless you have a very large amount of floor space available...

ian