Popular Woodworking 2004-10 № 143, страница 56

WOODWORKING

ESSENTIALS

BY NICK ENGLER

Intro to the Table Saw

Few tools have revolutionized a craft as much as table saws have changed woodworking. These saws saved tedious hand work and - beyond making single pieces - made it possible to precisely reproduce parts quickly and accurately. This affected how furniture and other woodenware was built and transformed woodworking design.

The table saw first appeared in about 1800, although historians disagree on who invented it. Some credit a German craftsman, Gervinus; others think it was developed simultaneously by several different people in Europe and the United States. The story I find most interesting was told to me by the late Brother Theodore (Ted) Johnson, a Shaker scholar and member of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community in Maine.

According to Brother Ted, the idea popped into the head of Sister Tabitha

GREAT TRICK:

Cutting on the Table Saw As Easy as 1-2-3-4

No matter how you slice it, there are only four steps to making a table saw cut:

• Lay out the cut on the board.

• Adjust the blade and other accessories for that cut.

• Align the board with the blade.

• Pass the wood over the saw.

Babbitt as she sat at her spinning wheel at the Watervliet, N.Y., community. (Sister Tabitha, it seems, was from an inventive family - her brother developed Babbitt metal, an alloy still used in bearings and bushings.)

Sister Tabitha happened to be looking out the window at two Shaker brothers as they bucked firewood with a two-man saw. She marveled at how much more efficient her revolving wheel was than their reciprocating saw. Why couldn't the brothers simply mount saw teeth on a wheel?

She asked them, and they decided to try it. They snipped a crude circular saw blade from tin, mounted the tin blade on an arbor and fastened the arbor to a workbench. Spinning the arbor with a hand crank, they found that a circular motion cut much more efficiently than a traditional straight-line, back-and-forth motion. The brothers soon installed an improved version in a water-powered mill to cut siding and flooring to size - the first recorded circular saw in America. From these humble beginnings evolved the table saw.