Craftsman RAS Table Dimensions

[Bill Yacey]

I just purchased a Craftsman 113.23102C radial arm saw, but the table was missing, Does anyone have dimensions for the table pieces?

The saw isn't in bad shape overall; it had a bit of arbor runout, around .010" , so I replaced the bearings and turned the blade bottoming nut on the lathe, and trued up the blade stabilizer washers. Total runout 4 inches out from center is now .002 inches.

Everything else on the saw appears that it led an easy life; bearings are all tight and smooth. The only thing is someone "farmer spliced" the AC line cord, which was wired for 240V with an #18 AWG power cord. I replaced it with an 8 foot piece of #12 AWG, spliced it with solder, thick wall shrink tubing, and fit a 20A twist lock plug. I left it wired 240V as my tablesaw is wired for the same, and I have twist lock outlets handy in the shop.

[Jim Allen]

Hi Bill,

I have a RAS model 113.19771 bought it about 40 years ago...
a shop 095.jpg

The table is 3 pieces, back is 6½" wide, middle is 4" wide and front is 16" wide, they are 40" long and 1" thick.

Hope this helps.

[Bill Yacey]

Thanks Jim.
I imagine the table sizes didn't change much on these saw models. I'll lay it out with those dimensions and see how it'll work.

It's probably not critical because I intend to mainly use it for cross-cutting fret slots for guitar fingerboards, but I may use it for mitre cuts in the future. All the same, i'd like to make it standard to what it was supposed to be.

[Jim Allen]

Your welcome! I agree, I saw a picture of your model and the table looked about the same.

Good luck.

[Jim Becker]

Please be aware (if you are not already) that your saw was part of the very large recall quite a few years ago because of safety. You can get more information at:

http://www.radialarmsawrecall.com/

[Bill Yacey]

Please be aware (if you are not already) that your saw was part of the very large recall quite a few years ago because of safety. You can get more information at:

http://www.radialarmsawrecall.com/

I did indeed see that, but I don't think I'll destroy a perfectly good working saw. I feel that if you setup and use power tools properly, always use sharp blades and keep you hands away from the path of blades, you're not likely to get hurt.

Most of the accidents I've read about with radial arm (and table saws) are usually due to binding between the blade and fence, or feeding the blade the wrong way, or with lack of control.

[Bill Dufour]

I thought there was also a free blade guard upgrade?

[Bill Yacey]

No, from what I can gather because it's late in the program, they'll offer $50.00 to destroy your saw. If a blade guard update was still available, I would even buy the upgrade, but I'm certainly not going to destroy the saw because someone arbitrarily decided it was unsafe. It's not the tool that is unsafe, but the user.

I suspect that many of the injuries were due to inexperienced or overconfident hobbyists buying the saw, using it incorrectly and not having a feel for the tool. In the wrong hands, even a toothpick can do bodily harm.

I'll hop down from the soapbox now.

[Tom M King]

As I was taking my new one out of the box, in 1974, I built a 6 foot long table for it, framed with bolted 2x4's, and a double 3/4" Birch plywood cutting surface 6' long. It's still on that same base, although the top sheet of plywood has been replaced a number of times over those years. I built one new house a year for 33 years, and it got moved to every one of them, and has been moved a lot in the 13 years since then.

I probably used whatever width the particle board tops were that came with it, but those probably got thrown away that day.

[Jim Allen]

No, from what I can gather because it's late in the program, they'll offer $50.00 to destroy your saw. If a blade guard update was still available, I would even buy the upgrade, but I'm certainly not going to destroy the saw because someone arbitrarily decided it was unsafe. It's not the tool that is unsafe, but the user.

The upgraded blade guard was essentially for ripping, which I quite doing once I got a table saw, and it included a new table! I still use the original blade guard.

[Bill Dufour]

Blotter is the tern for the cardboard washers on a grinding wheel. Cut from a cereal box is the homemade version. More accurate then a hardware store washer since they are not bowed.
Bill D.

[Bill Yacey]

Third time typing this now- the site keeps saying I'm logged out and when I refresh to login (which it says I'm already logged in) I lose all the previously typed reply.

Anyways, Thanks to all for the replies and info.

I have a cabinet saw that will rip 52 inches, so I doubt I'll ever have the need to rip anything on the radial arm.

The radial arm saw was built for the sole purpose of cutting .023" fret slots for fingerboards, for which this saw is perfectly suited. It may also see the odd cross cutting duty and maybe some compound mitres as the need arises.

[Tom M King]

I leave mine set for cutting perfect 90 degree cuts, for things like tenon shoulders. It's not That much trouble to set it dead on, but a lot more trouble than not having to.

I have a second one without a fence-just a large flat table, that I keep a dado stack on. A fence gets fastened for whatever angle I need. Sometimes it needs to be a lot more than the saw will swing to a normal fence, so being able to set a skewed fence opens up a whole other range of angles.

[Jim Becker]

The radial arm saw was built for the sole purpose of cutting .023" fret slots for fingerboards, for which this saw is perfectly suited. It may also see the odd cross cutting duty and maybe some compound mitres as the need arises.

It seems to me that for a dedicated purpose like that, you can not only build your table custom to fit the purpose but also create some safety guards that work with the dedicated 90º cut lines and thin for-purpose blade. I'm guessing you'll be using an indexing system for fret location which also plays into that scenario nicely.

[Tom M King]

I'm not sure about yours, since mine is an older model, but the rollers that the motorhead travels on the arm have eccentric centers. You can play with their positioning, and get every bit of extra play out of them. You can get it dead true, but it does take a while. Having done that, I think it was in 1991, the last time, I've never wanted to cut anything heavy, or irregular enough to have any risk of locking the blade up, which would surely have a good chance of changing that.

If you could get yours set up to cut dead true fret slots, I wouldn't want to use it for anything else, or at least anything else that there might be any possibility of a jamb.