In early November of 2003, I bought a table saw. The table saw pictured above, in fact. I got it through the Want Advertiser for not too much money, considering its mass and relative condition. It's a Rockwell model 34-400, and according to Delta (who bought Rockwell), mine was made in April of 1965. Pretty impressive that it's still in fine working order.
The tabletop and extension wings are cast iron, making this a very heavy machine. Even getting it in to the garage was tricky... Before I could really use it, I need to make a few modifications:
- I scraped off a good bit of rust from the tabletop with a razor blade, and coated the iron surface with a bit of wax to prevent further rust
- It came with a light switch as the power switch. Rather than having to fumble around trying to turn this beast off with my hands full, I picked up one of these
- I dug around the inside and removed tons of sawdust and other accumulated gunk from the mechanisms, and used white lithium grease to lubricate the works
I had to dig out quite a lot of gunk, but I managed to liberate the positive stop adjustment screws on the top of the table, and set the 45° and 90° stops with my combination square:
More recently, I've built a cross-cut sled to aid in safe cutting, and will undoubtedly add to this page as I learn and build more.