Moisture content to trigger a Sawstop will vary depending on wood species. But most people don't like to work with wet wood because it'll likely warp as it dries. Try to find an Ridgid R4512 or Delta 36-725. There's a Craftsman clone of the R4512. I wouldn't bother with a Ridgid TS3650 or Craftsman 113s for a beginner. A riving knife is a bare minimum. Have an alert for sawstops, too. A lot of sellers will be upgrading their tablesaw to a Sawstop and are looking to offload their current saw for a good price to make room.
I bought a Laguna F2 about 3 years back. It's a great saw, cast iron table, plenty of power, riving knife & blade guard and an adjustable trunnion that I have dialed in to being less than a 1/10,000th out of square between the blade and miter slot - that's pretty critical to me as I do a lot of segmented turning and errors are multiplicative to the number of pieces. If the saw is out 1 thousandth over 16 pieces that equates to ~4/25ths. The reason I went with the Laguna was partly price - at ~$1700 it's the cheapest 1.75hp saw with a cast iron table on the market (new) but mainly how good my Laguna Revo 18/36 lathe is .... my only complaint about it is that I didn't drop the extra $900 to get the 24/36 instead. So far my table saw has been just as impressive as the lathe. I'm really happy with both - so much so that when I move to my new shop next year, I'll be adding three new Laguna tools - a 12 inch jointer and a 2nd bandsaw, this one 18 inch instead of 14 (I hate my Jet) and a 20 inch planer. I do use a lot of "raw" wood .... logs to lumber rather than buying it from the lumber supply.
the jointer looks pretty good so far--started processing the wood for the workbench legs, here's three 2x8s jointed and planed, just have to saw the fourth surface for final width and they'll be ready for glue-up. I think the Cutech machine is going to work out well.
From looking at the last couple of pages, yall have very nice equipment and make very nice things. So how many of yall do chainsaw art?
the leg components are 35". The jointer bed is 31", the fence is 24", and the extensions end-to-end go 54". The aluminum fence also has a couple of stiffening support assemblies on the back side, on both the infeed and outfield ends--I'll include a photo here. Once I got those dialed in and adjusted correctly, all the flex in the fence pretty much vanished. So for my purposes with mostly small pieces I'm not really sure I would need to upgrade to their cast-iron fence add-on. But we'll see how it goes over time.
I can't see needing to upgrade the fence if all you are doing is ~3ft plus or minus some. My Wahuda doesn't have those fence flex supports and I have no problem with stuff like that, assuming I'm careful. For small stuff it's fantastic - huge upgrade over the old bench top 3 blade Delta I had. The new cutter heads are leaps and bounds better.
thought I'd share a progress photo on the workbench, here is a rough dry-fitting with just clamps. Kind of a relief to see my basic math skills from 7th grade have survived and have resulted in joints lining up and heights and widths all working out. Got a big slab of walnut that will get turned into a leg vise. The slot on the bench top will also get a walnut planing stop. It's moving along.
Are the legs notched at all for the aprons? Why a planing stop that deep and that orientation on the bench and not at the head? That thing looks like a tank, though. Reminds me of the Nicholson hybrid bench I made at my old house that wasn’t able to follow me because it was so big. The leg assemblies were not as thick as yours but had two rails tenoned at the top and towards the bottom that were the same thickness as the legs. So it was solid. And the top was laminated and 3 1/4” thick. Served me well. Now the ex-wife uses it as junk storage. My current bench I made a smaller knockdown one that breaks down into 6 pieces that mainly joins through tusked tenons. SYP and tulip poplar. It is fine but I miss large and heavy. I just don’t have the space even for a permanent small bench setup.
yeah, kind of hard to see the notches with the clamps in the way, but all four legs are notched into the aprons like this the planing stop/rail along the length of the bench top is something I've seen on other benches, it will help with surface planing small pieces across the bench top (it's 2/3 across from the front of the bench), folks also mortise slots in them to hold narrow tools like chisels etc--kind of takes the place of a tool tray without the messiness of a tray collecting shavings, dust, and just plain junk. The underside of the planing stop has notches to raise it or lower it to flush with the bench top, depending on what you're doing. Sort of following what this guy does:
Ah, ok. Good to have that integration with the aprons to reduce racking and your work holding will benefit having the aprons flush with the legs (assuming you are boring lots of dog holes). Looks great. I have seen the slot stops in use but I prefer a head stop and if I want a long stop on the side in addition I can use a long plane stop because I have dog holes there. Both of my benches have had tool wells because I find them super useful. Will you be putting in a crochet as in the picture? My old one had it (it had no vise as I went pretty old school) and they are definitely versatile. With the current bench I just made a front vise and left it at that. Not nearly as nice as a walnut leg vise but, again…space restrictions and constant put together and take down. I also have a moxon vise I made out of maple years ago that clamps to the benchtop. Today I was able to finally spend some time on my desk build again. It is almost ready for finishing. I did some design tweaks midway based on how it will be used. I’m trying to figure out the best way to make the top lidded compartment attach only via hidden magnets so it can be removed easily when the whole top needs to be used for laptops and whatnot. I just have to test various magnet combos and placement and all that.
I thought a lot about a tool well but finally decided against one, more because I think the joinery it would have needed exceeds my skill level right now. As massive as this thing is, the cuts and joints are all pretty basic and for the most part, forgiving. haven't decide on the crochet, I have seen one case where someone put one right next to a leg vise to use as a stop. I'm more inclined to put it on the rear of the bench as I plan to use both sides. Still up in the air on that one. I also considered going completely without a vise, there's a guy on YouTube who advocates that and has great videos on all the different clamping methods he has that don't involve a vise. I finally just decided a vise would be cool to have and would add a bit of aesthetic appeal. sounds great, would love to see a picture if and when you've got one to share
