OK, after owning my BT3K for several years now, I've FINALLY started putting it to use! I've been working on making some media shelves for my daughter to hold her CD's, DVD's and video games. The experience has been a good one. I've learned a few things about me and my saw.
My shop is excruciatingly small. It's 10'x11' which is small enough, but I am blessed to have a few large power tools (old floor model Rockwell drill press, 14" band saw, floor model Jet belt/disc sander, radial arm saw, and of course, my BT3000), so the shop is more of a storage room and the BT3000 gets rolled out the door into the carport when used. The door is a 32" door, which nets about 27-28" clearance to roll anything out. Any full size saw would not fit through the door, which is one of the main reasons I wound up with the BT3000. It measures 26 1/2" depth, and it will fit through the door, so it works.
One thing that I've learned is that I don't like how difficult it is to get an accurate, repeatable cut with the fence, both with the saw and especially with the router table attachment. My lack of experience is part of the problem as I know that proper planning can minimize the number of times one must change the saw setup. That being said, I have precious little time to play in the shop, so anything I can do to minimize setup time gives me more time to actually work on a project.
All this is to preface my desire (need) to keep my BT3000, but improve on it's ease of setup and accuracy. In particular, the Ryobi router mounting kit is fair at what it does, but the split fence attachments are very difficult to set up accurately (and almost impossible to repeat), especially for jointing. This led me toward looking for a dedicated router table solution as this is the weakest link in my setup.
In my search I discovered Incra. Oh boy, the engineering mindset that I am blessed (cursed?) with is very intrigued with their products. They make sense to me. I have searched all over the interwebs and found a few people that have installed the Incra TS-LS system on smaller saws (Bosch, Ridgid), but none on a BT3000. I would like to install this, router table and all, on my BT3000 -
The router table would have to be shortened to fit between the rails as the BT3000 is not as deep as a standard table saw, but that is doable. I would also build a new cabinet to mount the saw on and to support the ends of the long rails.
I've also kicked around the idea of adapting the Incra positioner and fence to the stock BT3000 rails, as I have several spare sets of rails and that would allow me to keep the SMT and the factory outfeed table that I have, but the factory rails don't look like they'd lend themselves to mounting the Incra hardware.
Any thoughts on this idea? Sorry for being long-winded!
David
My shop is excruciatingly small. It's 10'x11' which is small enough, but I am blessed to have a few large power tools (old floor model Rockwell drill press, 14" band saw, floor model Jet belt/disc sander, radial arm saw, and of course, my BT3000), so the shop is more of a storage room and the BT3000 gets rolled out the door into the carport when used. The door is a 32" door, which nets about 27-28" clearance to roll anything out. Any full size saw would not fit through the door, which is one of the main reasons I wound up with the BT3000. It measures 26 1/2" depth, and it will fit through the door, so it works.
One thing that I've learned is that I don't like how difficult it is to get an accurate, repeatable cut with the fence, both with the saw and especially with the router table attachment. My lack of experience is part of the problem as I know that proper planning can minimize the number of times one must change the saw setup. That being said, I have precious little time to play in the shop, so anything I can do to minimize setup time gives me more time to actually work on a project.
All this is to preface my desire (need) to keep my BT3000, but improve on it's ease of setup and accuracy. In particular, the Ryobi router mounting kit is fair at what it does, but the split fence attachments are very difficult to set up accurately (and almost impossible to repeat), especially for jointing. This led me toward looking for a dedicated router table solution as this is the weakest link in my setup.
In my search I discovered Incra. Oh boy, the engineering mindset that I am blessed (cursed?) with is very intrigued with their products. They make sense to me. I have searched all over the interwebs and found a few people that have installed the Incra TS-LS system on smaller saws (Bosch, Ridgid), but none on a BT3000. I would like to install this, router table and all, on my BT3000 -
The router table would have to be shortened to fit between the rails as the BT3000 is not as deep as a standard table saw, but that is doable. I would also build a new cabinet to mount the saw on and to support the ends of the long rails.
I've also kicked around the idea of adapting the Incra positioner and fence to the stock BT3000 rails, as I have several spare sets of rails and that would allow me to keep the SMT and the factory outfeed table that I have, but the factory rails don't look like they'd lend themselves to mounting the Incra hardware.
Any thoughts on this idea? Sorry for being long-winded!
David
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