Explore the Powermatic PM2000 restoration and its unique features after years of use. Discover its revival story today.
Thanks to Carbon Method for supporting this project. Their rust-removal and cast-iron protection system played a big part in bringing the top back to life. Visit CarbonMethod.com and use code SpagCoat for 10% off.
Almost ten years ago, one of the most recognizable tools from the early Wood Whisperer days left my shop. It was my custom Powermatic PM2000, complete with a ridiculous flame paint job, cast-iron extension wings, and a big Wood Whisperer plaque on the front. There isn’t another one like it, and if you watched The Wood Whisperer in the early years, you’ve probably seen me use it.
In 2016, the saw left my shop as part of a charity auction. Eventually it ended up with Guild member Socheat, who used it for years before his woodworking took him in a different direction. The saw had been sitting in storage, so he reached out to see if I had any thoughts about where it should go next. I don’t think he expected my answer to be, “I’ll take it!”
So nearly ten years after it left, the Flaming Table Saw came home.
An Unexpected Piece of Wood Whisperer History
I already have a great table saw, so this wasn’t about needing another machine. But once Socheat offered me the chance to get this one back, it was hard to say no.
We’re also in our 20th year of The Wood Whisperer, which probably made me a little more sentimental than usual. When the truck showed up, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
The delivery also happened right in the middle of our live Woodworking Morning Show, so I turned the camera around and let everyone watch the whole mess unfold.
As I started taking the crate apart, I realized I had missed this saw more than I thought.
If you want to see the PM2000 back when it was still part of my regular shop setup, it shows up in a bunch of the older videos. One good example is my old Table Saw Setup & Tune-Up series. You can watch those here:
You can also see the original charity auction listing here:
The Saw Needed Some Work
The saw was complete and basically sound, but nearly two decades of use and extended storage had taken a toll. The cast-iron top had stains and blemishes. The paint needed some attention. The gears and moving parts were packed with old grease and grime. And then there was the integrated mobile base. PM2000 owners probably know where this is going: the caster system was completely bound up.
A large part of this Powermatic PM2000 restoration became figuring out exactly how that system failed and finding a real fix instead of simply accepting that the factory mobile base was toast. After a bunch of research, experimentation, and contemplation, I finally had a saw that would dependably move around the shop.
Cleaning Up the Cast Iron
The next big job was the top. For that, I used Carbon Method’s rust-removal system. Their kit includes three abrasive pads: Fine, Very Fine, and Ultra Fine, roughly equivalent to 320–400, 600–800, and 1,200–1,500 grit.
Since the saw didn’t have active rust, I skipped the most aggressive pad and started with the gray Very Fine pad along with Carbon Method’s Reconditioning Oil. I cut the pad to fit my random-orbit sander, added a few spritzes of oil, and worked across the entire surface.
Years ago, I probably would have done this with WD-40. Carbon Method says its oil uses chemistry that helps soften rust. I can’t speak to the chemistry, but I can say that it works faster and makes less mess than the WD-40 method I used in the past.
The process isn’t aggressive enough to erase deep scratches or remove the original Blanchard grinding marks, which is a good thing. The goal wasn’t to make this look like a brand-new piece of cast iron. I wanted to clean it up and make it look as good as it reasonably could.
After the first pass, I cleaned the surface with mineral spirits, added more Reconditioning Oil, and repeated the process with the white Ultra Fine pad. Then I cleaned the top with Carbon Cleanse and applied three coats of Carbon Coat for protection.
The finished surface looks great, and based on my past experience with Carbon Coat, it should stay that way with very little maintenance. I do love a product that rewards my laziness.
Again, you can use code SpagCoat for 10% off at CarbonMethod.com.
Back in Business
With the top cleaned up, the mechanical parts serviced, the caster system working again, and the paint touched up, this Powermatic PM2000 restoration ended up being much more than a simple cleanup. I got back a piece of Wood Whisperer history that I never expected to see again. And now I actually get to use it.
There’s still the obvious question of what I’m going to do with two very capable table saws in the shop, but that’s a problem for another day.
Woodworkers for a Cause Is Back
Socheat’s generosity in getting this saw back to me also ties into something much bigger. For years, Nicole and I used the woodworking community to help raise money through Woodworkers Fighting Cancer. Together, we raised more than $150,000 for cancer charities before personal health issues forced us to take a break.
This year we’re bringing the event back under a new name: Woodworkers for a Cause. The new name gives us room to support a wider range of organizations, and this year’s beneficiary is the Purple Heart Project. You can donate directly, participate in the fundraiser, or bid on auction items donated by some incredibly generous sponsors.
We’ll also be holding a live event on October 2 at 10 a.m. Central, with the goal of raising as much money as possible for the charity. You can find all the details at: thewoodwhisperer.com/wfc
This table. Salt used to be mine. It's a custom powermatic PGM 2000 with a ridiculous flame paint job and cast iron extension wings. A true one of one, and you'll see this all in use through much of the early years of the Wood Whisperer. It left my shop almost ten years ago as part of a charity auction, and I honestly haven't thought about it much since then. It ended up in the hands of a guild member named So Chet, who reached out recently because he wasn't using it anymore.
So nearly ten years after it left, the old flaming table saw is back, and it's all thanks to so Chet, who generously covered the shipping and packaging fees. I honestly felt like a kid on Christmas when the truck rolled up. Hilariously, the delivery happened during one of our live woodworking morning shows, and I turned the camera around so that everybody could see this fiasco unfold. It was a pretty good time as I took the crate apart. I got more and more excited. I didn't realize how much I missed this saw or how much it would mean to use it again.
We're also in our 20th year of The Wood Whisperer, so you'll have to forgive me for getting a little bit sappy about having this piece of my woodworking history back in the shop. Oh, man, I really gotta pump the brakes here. I am so excited. I'm ready to start tearing this thing apart. There's stuff I want to address and see if it needs to be fixed or tuned up. And, you know, just get inside the guts of this thing.
But I need to get it off the pallet first. And those of you who have had large tools shipped in, you know that sometimes that's one of the most dicey propositions is trying to get these things down. Now one thing I always try to do with a shipment like this is all the parts from the crate and the pallet are potential things that you could use to kind of build yourself a little ramp, or a way to kind of systematically step your way down. So that's what we're going to do. See if we can't cobble something together. Come on, big man.
I know it's hot out. Go get a drink. You can't stay over here, though. It's going to get dangerous. So hopefully this will be pretty uneventful. Famous last words.
And, just in case this thing goes, I'm gonna open up the door. Hey, come on out of the way, dude. It's stuck. Archimedes got nothing on me. Maybe he did have something on me. All right, so I think I have decided to get this thing off of the mobile base.
There's really nothing I could do to evaluate this mechanism for the internal mobile base. Wireless here. The problem is, it is currently mobile, and I'm going to immobilize it to try to fix it. And if I can't fix it, then I would have been better off just leaving it as is. But at this point, you know, I got to try it. I've got to see if I can get this thing working again.
And worst case scenario, I figure out a way to lift it up, and I put a new, mobile base on there. But you can see what he did here. There's a little extension. I think it's really this leg that screws things up. Most table saws don't have a leg like this. So if you get a mobile base that includes that long extension, you probably won't have to do as much craziness as he did here.
But I've already loosened the bolts. There's a couple of bolts that hold into the top here, and then I've loosened these two bolts down there, so I should be able to pull the leg away. Let's give this a couple taps and just see. If we can move it out of the way. That's going. There we go.
All right. And I think the best way for me to get the base off is to literally take it apart. And then I could probably just use a mallet to hammer the pieces off of there. I never really have to lift the saw to get it off of this. Putting it on different story. But I am going to remove the motor cover here just to get it out of my way.
Oh my God, I forgot how big this motor is. So that, my friends, is a five horsepower made in America baldor motor. That's a beefy boy. Okay, here's my brilliant plan. The little persuasion. You should be able to slide these off.
A little bit per side. Yeah, baby. All right, we are on the ground. So if you're unfamiliar with this mechanism, this is the wheel that typically will adjust the tilt of the blade. And you can see in the position it's in right now that's exactly what it's doing okay. That's how it's supposed to work.
Now what they did with the PM2, thousands were like, if you pull out on this, it engages a different set of gears. So if you look inside here so that little pin, if we're able to pull the whole post back, it will engage with a different set of gears. You can kind of see the teeth on the right there. So this should relatively easily slide back toward me. And it doesn't. So something is kind of seized up.
And I don't know if it's actually broken it, like if that's the thing that he had said was broken or if there's something more, you know, worse than that. So I'm just going to kind of give this guy a little bit of a tippy tappy and see if I can get that thing to slide. It might be able to see that pin has moved back further, but it's not yet engaged with the next set of teeth. So a few more taps. And I think we got it now. Right.
So you can see how this works. This is the shaft, the turns. It should be turning the sprocket here. And then the chain moves on all these at the same time. This reminds me a lot of, like, a planar raising and lowering mechanism, but let's clean it up, see what we're up against. All right, so a big part of the problem here is when I turn the handle, I don't see this post move at all.
Like it really. If it moves at all. It's very, very small amounts. So I think this mechanism is probably fine. I think it's something inside the cabinet and yeah, I don't know. I mean, at this point all I'm going to do is clean up that chain a little bit, lube it up and flip this guy back over.
I don't know, what do you guys think? Should I wax this chain? That's a cyclist joke. You know, part of the other thing that I'm thinking about here is this was never really intended to lift this all very high, and I found some of these little round red pieces of plastic. And it looks like this was an outer coating on the caster. So now with the thickness of this, I mean, it's almost a quarter inch thick.
If that was originally on the wheel, that was actually lifting it up even higher. So just over the years it got dry and brittle and broke off. So now the saw when the casters are engaged is actually sitting lower than it should. I mean, it's not really improving very much. So all right, so yesterday I went home and did a little bit of internet sleuthing. And turns out there's just not a ton of information out there on this particular generation of PGM 2000.
What is out there, though, is all the same complaint. There are two things that are happening with this particular sore. One is the urethane. That's drying and cracking off of the wheels. That's a major problem because that causes you to lose a significant amount of height. The second problem is the tightness of the mechanism without feeling like you're grinding and having to push through.
You shouldn't have to push that hard. And I had a later generation 2000 where I didn't have to push that hard. So I know that's wrong, but what is it about this first generation that was just so poorly designed? Like they all had this problem? So one of the tips I found in the forum was that you can just remove this pan at the bottom. Now, it's not a way I'd want to do like major surgery on this thing because it's really hard to access.
You can't get the pan out. I got this big motor in the way, but it is going to allow me to show you what I think is going on. I can't be 100% sure, but I think so because the wheel is so darn tight. When there's weight on it, it's like something gets hung up when weight is involved. So let me show you what I found here. All right.
So you should have a good look at one of the casters here. I have the system fully retracted. Right. So if you look at this caster, you got a lot of movement here. If this wheel were the full diameter, we have plenty of room there. Right?
So it would just be sitting up a little bit higher. This disc right here, this is what comes down. When the system is engaged, it starts to slowly push its way down its sandwiches against this, bottom piece and pushes the caster into the ground. So what is happening? When weight applies, something is getting hung up, and the only thing I can think is, you see, this hex bolt here? Well, there's another one on the other side.
And I think those are just Guideposts to help keep this thing from like, moving around too much. Now this is a bolt where you could see it's smooth near the head of the bolt. But the threads down here, they have to be threaded into this caster. So what I think is going on here is as there's weight applied and all this see all this play. Right. All you have to do is kind of torque this one way or the other.
And those threads are going to catch on and grip and it's going to prevent it from moving. So man this just seems like a whole lot of work. But I have a feeling that if I can get these bolts out and I could maybe smooth out the area that is not engaged with the caster and just make it nice and smooth, maybe this will perform a little bit better. Now that that pan is up, it actually gives me more room to work. So I think we're going to we're going to tilt this thing again. I think I need to get in there.
Got to get in there. All right. So these wheels actually come off pretty easily. There's just a little bolt that serves as the axle. That should be pretty straightforward. And when the new wheels come in, I'll be able to pop those on.
But you can see this is where the the urethane was on there, and now you're just at the core of the wheel is all that's left on all four of them. The other thing that's happening, and obviously I'm trying to get this off so I could deal with these bolts, but one of my bigger concerns is, I'm losing my balls there. They're popping out of this. This this thing is so worn and loose. I don't know if it can be tightened. And, you know, if we could repack these, we'll have to see.
But I have to get this guy off of there. So fortunately, there is a, one of these sprockets that you can kind of, loosen a little bit. And that gives me enough play in the chain that I can actually get, you know, a little wrench back there and take that rear bolt out of there. So I should be able to get all four of these off. So, you know, this makes me wonder if I should just be replacing the entire caster. Because I ordered replacement wheels, and I think we might be better off with replacement casters because this is poopoo.
All right, so before I go pick up some casters, I'm going to try to flatten out some of these threads here. I've, you know, done a little bit by hand. It's working okay. But I think I'm going to hit it with a Dremel. It's nice because it rotates as well. So it's kind of helping, cool the bolt as we go, but I think that's looking pretty good. so I got new casters on order, and we may as well clean these guys up.
Now these are just aluminum. And some of them are gunked up pretty good. And there's also some metal shavings in there that are real fun, so I may as well get these clean. A little bit of a power wash and some warm water should work wonders in here. All right, so it's been a few days and I am still waiting for these new casters to come in. But meanwhile I've been doing more research and just kind of posting online about my experiences.
And it's it's interesting because it's a little bit daunting when anyone who has experience with this seems to believe that it's unfixable. This is just a known issue, and there's really no fix for it. And I'm determined to make this work. And I may fall flat on my face, but I'm going to keep going. So to that point, while I had more time to sit around and just think about what I'm doing here as this beautiful saw was sitting on its side, I decided I wanted to try to get those bolts out. Smoothing them is one thing, but if I can either leave them with something or, honestly, I could grind them better if I could get the bolts out.
I just cannot get the bolt past that gear that's in there. And I don't really want to take this whole thing apart. So I started to to play with it a little bit more and I realized, well, this little puck here is just threaded on there. So if I actually lower the system to its lowest point, at some point, those are just going to drop off. So I just kept going and then suddenly that was still on there. Boop.
And these guys came off right. So let me get this one last one off. Now once that popped off I got really, really excited because check this out. Now I have enough room to tilt that past the gear. And there's one of the bolts, right. So I'm halfway there.
The problem is this one between the the gear itself, the teeth on the gear, and the chain. Even with a little bit more of an angle here, I just cannot get this bolt out. So I think what I'm going to have to do is at least remove one of these gears. If I could remove one that's going to loosen the chain enough that I should be able to get that out of the way, and then I should be able to get all four bolts off, because, man, I wish I could just find a way to get it past. But no matter what I do, it's just not going. So, let's see what we need to do here.
Right? So here's the little movable gear, the movable sprocket that pushes the chain and provides the tension later on. But it's kind of the same concept in how it's held in with this little retaining clip. And I don't have pliers to get that thing off of there, which means new Tool Day. I was able to get a little said some 20 bucks at Lowe's. And I think with the tight space, we're probably going to need the one, the one with a 90 degree angle on here.
So let me swap that out. And this should allow us to just kind of go in there and spread that sucker out. Now I don't need to remove this one, so I'm not going to do it. This actually reminds me of, the quick link removal tool for my bike. So you squeeze it and it spreads it apart. Unlike regular pliers, I can't see what the heck I'm doing in there.
So pardon my back. All right, let's make sure we don't lose that. This guy should just slide right off. Well, son of a biscuit. Look at that. That is a nice.
Give me a chance to at least clean the gears. And, now that the chain is loose. Boop bolts, baby bolts, and hopefully. I can get the rest of these out. Heck, yeah, baby man, I am the sexiest woodworker in this room. Okay.
Heck yeah. All right, so here's the thing. Even if I can grind these down further and really, you know, get that as smooth as possible, this still could have a sort of raspy file effect. I mean, this is just aluminum. So you can imagine over time it's it's grinding in this hole. You know, that's just, that's not going to be good.
So I think the real fix for this is to get that longer shoulder, to have a smooth shoulder and then have, you know, really only have threads where we need them. So the question is whether I can get a bolt that does exactly what I need it to do. Or do I have to buy something that maybe is a little bit larger and cut it down? I don't know, I got to see what's out there, but I think this is a, McMaster car to the rescue situation. I may as well just give this chain a little bit. A little bit better of a clean.
I'm not a whole lot I want to do with it. Try to get as much of, whatever oil is on there from the manufacturer, and then I'm just going to hit it with a little bit of dry lube. Ideally, you're going to see me use this throughout. I like dry lube. Just in terms of anything that's around dust. The dust, plus any kind of grease or wet lube is going to make sludge.
So I think this works a little bit better. And while I'm here, I may as well make sure that the threads on these guys. Get some just hot business. All right, so we got to wait for stuff to come in. As you can see by. So getting this all back into my hands, our community is incredibly generous and Nicole and I have always enjoyed harnessing the power of that community with our charity, Woodworkers Fighting Cancer.
Over the years, we've raised over $150,000 for various cancer charities. But for some personal health reasons, we needed to take a break. I'm excited to announce that this year we're bringing the charity back, and we're rebranding it to woodworkers for a cause. We really want to extend our reach to other charitable causes like this year's charity, The Purple Heart Project. You can donate directly or bid on some of the amazing auctions that we have up already, courtesy of some incredibly generous sponsors. And you really don't want to miss our big live event happening on October 2nd at 10 a.m. central.
It's going to be kind of like a live telethon encouraging people to donate, as well as talking about some of the sponsors products that are up for auction. It's going to be an awesome time and where you can learn more at TheWoodWhisperer.com/WFC I've been in a holding pattern waiting for some stuff to come in, and I think I have some good news. So first of all, the new casters are in. Look at these beefy boys. Right? Got the same diameter stem on here.
The problem is it's going to be a little bit too long. So what I think we can do if you look at this, when this is in place, it's about flush there. I think what we'll be able to do is put this in place. We can put this lock nut on there and then once that's fully seated, then I could just chop the top off. I think that'll work pretty well. The other thing is the bolt situation.
All right, so with these guys, you can see the amount of space I wanted to smooth out. But the problem is, when you buy this type of hex cap bolt, it seems like these are kind of fixed distances. You can't really. I guess you could special wood or something, but I was trying to get something off the shelf. So what I decided to do, since I couldn't find anything that would actually keep the length, the total length the same while changing the smooth shoulder I just bought. Doing a little math, I bought a longer bolt.
So now this longer one, if you take a look, if I'm able to cut it so it's the same length as the original bolts, look how much more smooth shoulder I get. It's pretty much exactly what I was looking for, so there's a real good chance this is going to solve some problems for us. So, let me get some of these casters together, and then we could reassemble. Well, unfortunately, I goofed up when I went to attach the new bolts. They get locked up pretty quickly. So when I took this guy to my little testers, I was estimating based on, you know, the amount of, thread lock that was on there that it was just getting caught up because of that and it turns out, altogether got the wrong size.
So thankfully already the master car super fast with the shipping here, I was able to get the correct size. And these are 5/16. And when I test them out, they're perfect. So now even after I cut all of those I got, I cut eight more, right? So originally I thought having these all the way up would be the way to go. But what I realized is, because this does have to get threaded when I'm bringing these bolts in and having to navigate around this little gear here, there's not enough room for me to go at the kind of angle that I need to go in, and I can't accurately screw into this.
But there's an alternative option here. What we're going to do is take her two bolts. All right, so with those bolts through now, all I have to do is line it up with the holes. Now, once it contacts the thread, obviously I can't turn this, but because I disengage the chain, I could turn the gear. Now we're threaded and I just bring it all the way up until it stops. So now I can take the caster and try to thread into the holes.
I can't see what I'm doing there. We got to. Once I go as far as I can by hand, then I can try to get this guy in there and I can see. All right. And now you can see. Smooth, full range of motion and absolutely nothing to chew up.
The aluminum. That's a nice smooth shift. Oh, and I did forget to mention that I am putting a little bit of, thread lock in here on the female side. All right. So now I've got to get this gear back on. And I got to get that ring back on there.
Oh, here we go. And now I just need to see if I can get this chain wrapped around. And I'm not really sure how it's all going to work out. Oh, that's right. I gotta put the clip on after the chain is done. Son of a bitch.
Quick! All right, so I've got the chain on every one of these. And what I'm hoping is if I can make this pretty taut and find the spot where it intersects with the keyway, we should have what we need. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Okay, I think that might be what we needed to do.
Now, let's get that stupid friggin ring back on there. I'm just thinking a little coating of grease is going to go a long way in making this work better over time. That's what I got saying. Worst case scenario, none of this works and it doesn't matter anyway. So a little bit of grease. Yeah, not that much.
So before I flip this guy over let's just see if everything works. Well it's different when there's no weight on it. The good thing too is this is going to give me a real feel for how long it should take to do the travel that it's supposed to do, because I've never really known how many turns. It's a lot of turns, which I suspected, but I also know it was broken. All right, if this goes poorly, this footage will never see the light of day. And call.
Can you help? This is going to look scarier than it is. We each just have to grab one of these rails. Yep. Trim. We just need to set it down.
Okay. And this is the light end. Okay. Keep in mind, I did this myself last time, okay? So get under it like I am. So you're not putting any of your back at risk.
You're going to bend your knees. Right. And we're just going to slowly let it down. And if it goes a little bang at the end, that's fine. Okay. Okay.
Ready? Just bring it down. Okay. Now we're going to fight it a little bit. Bend your knees. I abandoned.
See? Not that bad. There's your leg. Day done. I knew it would work. All right.
And now the moment of truth. If I did all this for nothing, it's going to be a sad little monkey. All right, I'm up on the casters. I just want to see how far it's going to go. Definitely getting harder, but the heavy side. Now, I don't want to get too excited because time will tell.
Obviously, when these things left the factory, they probably worked then too. It's a question of how much this thing can hold up over time. Will it continue to work? Well, it dependably go up and down. And this is the part that gets me worried. Is that retracting is as difficult as it is.
So after my little dance number, there, I realized that there was a little bit of a problem. One of the wheels wouldn't retract, and that's why everything was getting wonky. When I'm trying to retract everything. Because one stayed down and I think I figured out exactly why that happens. There's no limiter or stop on this thing. So when I'm cranking down and I said, I just want to see how far it will go, think about what's happening.
That top disc is getting further and further away from the threads, and what can happen is it can actually get far enough away that once I start to try to retract, it fell off, right? So we have to be super careful. So I just kind of jacked up this side a little bit, made sure everything retracted completely. And then now we're going to try it again. The key though, and I think this is where people make the mistake. The key is to just wait until it's a little bit off the concrete.
Once it's often moving, you're done. You're never going to get this thing a full half inch or three quarters of an inch off the ground. And I think that's the mistake. And the system should have been designed to limit how far you can go down. You should not be able to just completely walk those threads off of the casters or off of that little, that little disc. So let's reengage.
And once it looks like this thing can move, we're good. Now, of course, this system, one of the big flaws of it, one of the many flaws of it, is if you can't come that far off the ground, well, now it can be just something as simple as a wood chip or something, right? Might get in the way or a little bolt or a screw. You don't have that much clearance, so just something to keep in mind. But I have a pretty smooth floor. And for the amount that I actually will need to move this thing, which is very limited, I don't think I need to worry about it.
All right. I'm about an eighth of an inch so fully mobile I can get my hooks off of here. So now we should be able to move around. Scraping. It's working just fine. Now we have it in a place we want it, and we bring it back down.
I think that's it. All right, so with that behind us, I think we need to get into the guts of this thing. It is a perfectly working saw. It's not like I have a ton of stuff wrong with it. But if I'm going through this trouble and we're going to put this thing back in service, we may as well get inside, clean all the dust out, lubricate where we can, and then recalibrate and it's ready to go. So I'm going to use my material, handler here to help me with this top.
I should be able to just unbolt the top and slide it over onto these arms, lift it up and out of the way, and then I can work freely in here. So right inside here, you can kind of see this is one of those areas that can sneak up on you. Because if you kind of look inside the saw and you look at the mechanism, you might see this and go, okay, that's pretty clean. I don't think I have anything to clean there. But look right over here. There's just a film that's on there, and over time, what that's going to do is make it really hard to do the tilt mechanism.
So that's one of the things we're going to start. Keep it all the way 90 degrees. And then I'm going to clean all that gunk off of there. And we're not going to get all of it unless we take this thing completely apart. And I really don't think it's in bad enough shape to warrant that. So just clean up what we can access and do this on the front end, the back.
And we'll be in far better situation than we were before. Right. These gears down here are pretty gunked up too, so I'm going to try to clean that off. Oh, and this is just a little bit of mineral spirits. Nothing too crazy here. Just want to get some of that grease worked off of there.
So any place I have a gear or moving part, I'm going to give it a little bit of dry lube. Like I said, that's my preference inside a saw. And having the little tip on here is really essential. Otherwise, you're getting this stuff everywhere. I lost my red hoochie. I lost my red hoochie again.
Stupid thing. All right, the final thing I think I'm going to take care of on the inside here is the, riving knife and splitter holder here. So this is supposed to be kind of spring loaded. There's a few set screws that allows you to adjust the angle and position, and I'm assuming it's where it needs to be. We can adjust it later, but, usually you kind of rock this little cam lever down, and that's what holds it in. And when you relieve the pressure like this, this is supposed to be bouncing back this way and it's not moving at all.
So I think as much as I know this is kind of a pain in the butt, because I've dealt with it before, I think we have no choice but to take it apart, because we just will not be able to get the splitter installed this way. And I'm sure it's just caked up with dust and probably just too much friction. It needs a little lubrication, and, we should be good. Okay, there's spring. You could see this guy should be. Sliding in.
I don't know, he needs a little help, though. Let's clean it first. All right, so even after cleaning it up, this is just not a good fit. I mean, it really doesn't want to go. And I remember this being a bit of a challenge when I had this saw, but it wasn't this much of a challenge. Like the fact that you can't even easily get it in there, and I could probably slide it in from the end, but I would need the hammer to get that thing to go in there.
And this is supposed to be able to slide in fairly easily. So I mean, it's close, but something is off. I think I'm going to have to file away just a little bit of material on here. So that actually just kind of pops right in this crazy. All right. There we go.
That took way more filing than I'd like to admit. I think we got it. So a little bit of dry lube. This guy should just slide on in. That's pretty good. That's how it's supposed to work.
All right, well, I let some of that paint dry. I'm going to turn my attention to this monster cast iron leg. I'm going to turn my attention to this monster cast iron leg. This thing is just a beast. I mean, it's really cool. I just kind of wish it wasn't part of the thing.
It's just so difficult to manage. But anyway, on the bottom here, it's got these little leveling feet, which is just a bolt and a nut screwed into a threaded hole at the bottom. So if I remember correctly, these were never really employed other than for the height that they're at right now. So I guess if you had a really unlevel floor, you might want to use them for that. But I think in most cases with just a little bit of flex in the rails and the table itself, as long as you were at the right height to get under that extension wing, I think it's going to be fine. So what I think I'm going to do is remove these because I'm trying to make this thing mobile.
I don't want to move it that often, but when I do I want this to slide. Now, ports sliding against concrete. Not ideal. I think we can maybe do something better now. I don't know how well it's going to work, but I think it's worth a shot. I'm going to take these out, and instead I'm going to install a piece of half inch ultra high molecular weight plastic.
Now that's something that yeah, over time it might wear out. But for the amount that I'm actually going to need to move it against smooth concrete, it should slide. Okay. I think. Oh, I guess there's only one way to find out. All right.
So I'm thinking I might actually have a piece of this material up in the, crawl space of doom. And I'll take you guys up there very often, but, we'll do it today. Part of the reason I call it that is because of this ladder, which is kind of terrifying. Especially when you're doing it with one hand. So there's actually a lot of overflow and stuff that is completely disorganized. And I'm the only one who comes up here.
So it's my mess. And I know where everything is, including knowing where this piece of ultra high molecular weight plastic was. And I don't even know why I have it, but I have it. And today's its day to shine. All right, so let's get these on here. Obviously I had to go back because I'm a big, dumb, dumb face and I forgot to make the hole big enough because when you recess a bolt, you need to be able to actually get the socket on there, too.
So it's got to be a larger diameter. Here's the other thing. This is one single point of contact I'm under no illusions that these are going to potentially spin, but for the amount that I move them, I'm not too worried about it. So I'm going to just make them nice and snug. That's not too bad. But you know, underweight it.
It's probably going to spin. But who gets. A smart man would have gotten a regular Allen wrench. I am not a smart man. All right, now there's a lot of scratches on this thing, and it's really silly, you know, to worry about stuff like this. But, as I always say, in for a penny, in for a metric ton.
So I've got some spots. I think I've got a color that's, you know, kind of close enough. This might be the third color that I'm trying, but this this is going to be as good as I'm going to get now. I'm not going to actually, hit it with the spray paint directly. I'm going to spray it in here and just have it in a tray so I could dab it on with a small brush. Oh, the things we do for the ones we love.
And I do love this. So, you know, I'm not expecting this to be perfect by any means. I'm just making it so that these are much less noticeable from a distance. It's interesting because the paint that flakes here is really on the base. The body where the flame paint job is is much more intact and looking good. But you can see the powermatic yellow baby poop yellow is poking out here, so this cast iron base was already pretty finished.
And the fact that the paint is just kind of flaking off like it is, and we see that color, it's like they didn't even prime it, which is my guess for why it's not adhering very well and coming off in flakes. But this touch up will at least make it so that we can't see it from 100ft away. And now one of my big questions is whether or not this thing can still move. It can. I mean, it's not going to be the easiest thing in the world to move, but it doesn't have to be how often. And by moving this thing.
Right. So that's that's really all I wanted is the ability to move it by myself. And I think we got that right. So next up I'm going to take care of the fence rail. It's not in two better shape, but there are definitely some rough spots from some rust starting in the unpainted areas. And that can actually just lead to the fence not riding as, dependably and true and makes it a little bit tougher to move the fence.
So the easiest thing to do, if I could pick it up, to use a piece of backside sandpaper, we sell these on our website TWWStore.com What I like about them is because this is a painted edge, the paint level is a little bit higher. So you can just kind of take the, sharp end of the sandpaper and go right up against that paint line. And not scratch the paint at all. So you could just focus on the metal. Yeah, that's super rough. In the areas where the rust is bad, I'm hitting it with 220 and then a little bit of 320.
All right. So this strip now is raw metal. It's going to rust especially here in Missouri where it's super humid. So we have to do something to protect it. Now I'm going to work on the actual tabletop. We're going to do a full refresh.
And then when I'm at the point that I'm applying the protectant, I can come back here and apply it to the fence, rail the product. I'm going to use is carbon method's carbon coat. And I started using this a couple years ago, tried it out and was very skeptical. I even ran a few tests and I could link to some of those videos. If you want to catch up to see the journey that I've had with the testing on this stuff, but using it in my shop for the last couple of years in a very humid environment. I am extremely happy with the way this stuff works.
It's something that I don't really have to think about very often, and in the past when I applied paste wax, even when I lived in places like Arizona and Denver, I would be reapplying that paste wax pretty frequently and seeing little rough spots that I'd have to deal with. And I just don't really have to deal with that with this stuff, especially if you can apply it routinely. Maybe every year or two, you're going to be in really great shape. So this is what we're going to use on the, table saw top. So let's head over there. Carbon method's rust removal kit comes with three abrasive pads.
Fine. Very fine and ultra fine. The pads are designed to work with carbon methods. Reconditioning oil. Now, since I don't have any active rust, I'm skipping the maroon pad and starting with the gray, I cut the pad to fit my random orbit sander, add a few spritzes of the oil, and work across the surface. In the past, I would have used Wd40 for this.
Carbon method says that its oil softens rust through some magic chemistry or something. I don't know about all that, but I can tell you that it works faster and creates less mess than Wd40. I continue until the surface has a uniform appearance and the stains and blemishes are gone. This process isn't aggressive enough to remove the deep scratches and marks from the original Blanchard grinding, but it cleans and polishes the cast iron so it looks as good as it can. Next, I wipe the surface with mineral spirits, add more reconditioning oil, and repeat the process with the white pad. Then it gets one more mineral spirits wipe down.
Now to prepare for the protective layers, I use carbon cleanse until the rag comes up clean. You want that surface to be free of oil and any other contaminant. Before applying the carbon coat, I apply the carbon coat one section at a time. Each coat dries for about a minute before I buff it in, and I apply three coats in total. As you can see, the surface looks great. Based on my past experience with carbon coat, it should stay that way even in my humid shop.
With very little maintenance. I do love a product that rewards my laziness. Use code Spag code for 10% off at carbon method.com. So the action on the lever here didn't feel quite right, and when I turn it upside down, I can see a spring that looks like that spring is supposed to be on this post. Yeah. Oh, I did it, I did it!
Yeah, well, I got a little bit of play in there. I may as well hit it with some lube. Yeah. That's right. The table is not, squared up. That ain’t gonna fit on there.
I think we can do a little test run, get this guy plugged in. The thing is, I don't have a dedicated circuit for this. Saw. My sawstop is on a 20 amp circuit. My jointer, however, is on a 30 amp circuit, so I could just borrow a little power from there just so we can see that this thing is working. Imagine if I did all this and it wasn't.
That would suck. Okay, I have notes because I have a lot to say, and I need to organize my thoughts because I don't know what to do at this point. This thing is pretty much ready to go. Obviously, I still have to do a calibration. I move the table around so that it needs to be worked on. I'm waiting for parts to come in so I can install the sharp guard on the top, and the fence is going to need some help.
Over the years I've really upgraded how my fence works and having some kind of aluminum track on. There is something I've really gotten used to and I enjoy, so I would have to upgrade this fence. But the bigger problem is I don't know what I'm doing with this thing. I mean, I see two options. One is to keep it and the only way to keep it, because I can't just store it. I don't have extra room.
I have to have it in use. But if I do that, we have to do one of those classic head to head things. And we've seen some people do that. Some shops do it, especially if you do a lot of data work. You can keep one dedicated to dados. You can use the other one for everything else.
And that sounds great in theory, but the reality is it really would like relegate this to tasks that I don't do that often this thing would sit unused. Most of the time I don't cut that many dados. But then there's also the jig and fixture aspect of a lot of the things that I would use on a dedicated saw are the same things that I would be using on the other, also sleds and miter gauges. Well, they're not going to work on both saws, so do I have to have duplication of everything so that I can function on both of these? The additional thing is, with both of these saws together, you have more dust collection needs in a single drop. You have more electrical needs in a single drop.
And this guy with this hooked up dust collection is going to take a four inch port here. And on the bottom. And I've already got a jointer and the sawstop connected over there. So it feels very impractical to do the head to head. Oh, let's not forget I've got an outfeed table that I built that I absolutely love. It works great for storage.
I would hate to lose all of that storage, and I don't have a place to put that thing, so I'd have to figure that out. The other option is to pick one. All right, so obviously I wouldn't have gone through this trouble if I was thinking, oh, I'm just going to keep this all stop and get rid of this thing anyway. Now I want, I want to use this saw one way or another. This is where my heart is with this thing. Obviously, it was built for me.
It's a one of a kind thing. I would like to continue using it, but if I pick one, it's it's really tricky because the Sawstop has a safety feature that I love. I bought this all stopped for a reason. That said, we have to keep things in perspective. Number one, blade contact is usually not even the most common sort of injury. We have a table saws.
It's kickback. Right? Sawstop doesn't do anything than any other saw does to prevent kickback. But if you are using safety gear and you're using guards like this big guy. Right. And I use my blade guard on the sawstop all the time.
If you're using those things and you're taking all the proper precautions and you're paying attention, injury is not something that is a guarantee, right? And a lot of times we kind of treat it like it is. We treat it as if the table saw. It's not an if it's a whim and that's not true. I think a lot of times if you are taking the right precautions, you probably take more risks coming to the shop in your car that day than you did by operating your table saw with proper safety precautions. So I'm not too really worried about the safety aspects of it.
But there is. That's kind of the albatross like hanging over my head. I'm thinking about this safety feature that I would be deliberately walking away from in order to go with the saw that my heart wants, right. The other thing is this saw is a five horsepower table saw, which I didn't. That's not what I asked for. When when I had the option to get this thing, they sent it, which is kind of funny.
I asked for three horsepower. They sent five. The reality is, most of us don't need more than three horsepower. But bottom line, though, this is five horsepower. It is technically going to be a slightly more performant saw, so I don't think I'm going to have any performance drawbacks by using this. And in fact, it might be in some ways an upgrade.
So I don't know. I don't know, I really I really need your help. I need your help deciding what to do. I have a lot more than I want to do to this, so it's going to take some time. But I'm going to probably try this. I might move this.
All stop out of the way, put this guy in its place, start using it again, and just see what life is like with it and have a tough decision to make. And if I do decide to use this as my daily driver, just knowing that I am taking on that additional what I consider slight risk of not having the Sawstop insurance policy in place. But I don't think that's completely the end of the world with the way that I would work. I mean, the other thing is, I film what I do all the time, and I tend to overdo the safety things because I want to set a good example. And I think that kind of, you know, that works in my favor. All right.
So anyway, please let me know what you think. And I'm going to put a couple of links up here to a setup video, which is something I may have to watch myself to refresh my memory because this thing needs full calibration. And in that video I'm using this saw to do the setup, which is pretty fun. Anyway, thanks for watching. Thanks for coming with me on this journey. See you next time.