Popular Woodworking 2002-02 № 126, страница 48

TABLE SAW

Outfeed Tables

You can find all sorts of devices for sale to support your stock as you feed it over your table saw. Some sport rolling pin-style rollers, some have a series of roller balls. Some attach directly to your saw, others offer micro-adjustment to level it to the precise plane of your saw table.

My humble outfeed table offering has no such features. In fact, they are about as "plain Jane" as you can get. Remove them from the shop and no one would take them for anything other than what they are — a pair of trestle tables.

So what's the big deal? Well, if you operate in a small shop space, say a garage or basement, these tables will serve so many useful purposes you'll wonder how you ever did without them.

I've been using a pair of tables just like these in my basement shop for the past five years. They surround my table saw and can be easily repositioned for ripping long stock, crosscutting a full sheet of plywood and supporting long crosscuts using my table saw's sled (and they give me a place to hang the sled when it's not in use). But wait, there's more.

These tables also serve as stock support for both sides of my compound miter saw. I use them as smaller assembly tables, for stack

Don't let the simplicity

of these tables fool you. When used together they make many operations easier and serve many other tasks that aren't immediately obvious.

ing stock while I'm planing or jointing it. Sometimes I finish projects on them. And because they are also the same height as my regular assembly table, I can put larger objects on both.

I arrived at the trestle-style design because it's not only stout and material-efficient, but it keeps the base enough "inboard" so that you're not bumping table legs with your feet. It also keeps the weight down and makes them easy to slide on your shop floor.

Getting Set for Building

Before you start construction, measure the distance from the floor to the top of your table saw. There can be as much as an inch or two variance in heights. The plans given here are for a saw that is just over 34" high. You should make your tables' height Vs" less than your saw's height and reduce the height by as much as another Vk" if your shop floor isn't very

level around the saw. What can make these tables useless is if they are even a bit higher than the saw table. In my book, being slightly under doesn't matter.

And if you wonder why I didn't use levelers, I'll tell you. It's just not worth the hassle of adjusting them every time you move a table, let alone two of them. And you'd have to do this every time, owing to variations in the floor or the fact that most screw-adjustable levelers will wind or unwind just by dragging the table across a floor. When maintaining a plane in critical work, perhaps with a miter saw, shims or wedges are quick and easy.

Construction Details

I built these tables using both mortise-and-tenon joints and dowel joints. You could use only dowels if your shop isn't set up with mortising equipment. And in fact, my original tables were

by Steve Shanesy

Comments or questions? Contact Steve at 513-531-2690 ext. 238 or steve.shanesy@fwpubs.com

constructed entirely using biscuit joints and screws and are no worse for the heavy service they have seen. If you don't use mortises, remember to deduct the length of the tenons from the parts list.

I used stout white oak for the bases because I had some 8/4 stock on hand. But since I finished it out to 1V2" thickness, you might want to consider using ordinary 2 x 4s. Just don't use twisted ones.

Follow the diagrams and cutting list to prepare your stock in the correct sizes, making any allowance for a difference in table saw height in the leg parts.

Next take the feet, top rails and legs for Table 1 and lay out the mortise locations as shown in the diagram. All tenons are V2" thick by 1V4" wide by 1ty' long. Make the mortises the same dimensions except in depth. Make them ¹/16" deeper so the tenons don't bottom out before they seat home.

Layout Trick:Work From the Center Out

When I do layout work I often find it handy to use a couple tricks.Take the top rails and feet of Table 2, for example. It's really important that the mortises and dowel joints line up perfectly for the legs. To pull this off, I group all the parts together so their ends align perfectly. You can

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Popular Woodworking February 2002