Periodically I check the free section of Craigslist. Competition is fierce so I don’t generally have high expectations but it’s good to see what’s out there every now and then. On one of those occasions recently, I stumbled upon the trifecta in one post: something available, valuable, and near my house. The ad read “Free Table Saw – Doesn’t run”. I clicked on it and realized instantly it was a Grizzly brand table saw – something that could set you back about $1200 to buy new. I viewed the ad 37 minutes after it was posted, emailed and just happened to get a phone call 20 minutes later that I was first in line and to come and get it. By the way, I better bring three people because it’s “heavy”.
30 minutes later I’m at this lady’s house with nothing more than a trailer and two dogs. She takes me to the table saw which has been stored OUTSIDE for “several years” only protected by a tarp. She pulled the tarp back and my heart sank – rust had completely taken over this thing and squirrels had used it for a nest/nut repository. Not knowing much about it, I figured this was a lost cause. But seeing how I’d already made the trip, I backed the trailer up to it and loaded it up figuring I’d take it in for scrap metal if nothing else.
The “before” pictures really don’t do it justice.
After I got it home, my dad came down to help me see if we could get it running. He has experience in the past working with these types of machines and we were fairly confident we’d at least figure out WHY it wouldn’t run if nothing else. Little did we know, within ten minutes (and thanks to just re-twisting two wires back together) the thing was operational. The blade on it was still extremely sharp – just rusted.
So now that we knew it could run, I was ready to start the restoration.
With the top removed, I put it on a platform:
Meanwhile I also started “sanding” the top. This was only accomplished with an angle grinder and a wire brush. Unfortunately rust had done some damage and started pitting more than I anticipated:
With the exception of the motor, everything that moved in this thing was pretty much seized up with rust. That means it turned into a near total tear down. Everything in this picture had to come out and be repainted to get rid of the rust.
I ended up just doing away with all the old paint since the rust was spreading…
I also Bondo’d the top to get rid of some of the pitting..
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I had to completely take apart the fence attachment as well and redo it. Once I got everything completely put back together, I squared it all up and added a longer electrical cord to it. I’ve always wanted a large, heavy-duty table saw but never wanted to drop a lot of money on one. As this a 3HP, 240volt model – they are currently listed new at $1200 on the Grizzly site. Soon I’ll add a router table attachment…
Restoration on a Shoestring 