Homemade Sysport & MFT Table

[Hoover]

I had some scraps of plywood so I decided to make a combo sysport and mft style table to give me another work space and to organize my CT, festool stuff, leigh jig, etc. 

For the mdf top, what oil penetrates it the best for a protection and to seal it up?

 

[jonny round boy]

Why do you feel the need to seal the MDF?

Personally, I'd just leave it as it is. If it's good enough for Festool...

 

[Hoover]

It's in an insulated but unheated garage.  I am in the northeast US and we have cold snowy winters with dry air and warm often humid summers.  I Just want to add to the the life of the top and give it a little protection as I use it but also some protection from the changes in humidity, etc.

 

[AlexThePalex]

Hoover, you are worrying for nothing.

This is the condition of my untreated MDF sawtable top after 12 years:

[attachimg=#]

(Btw, Holland has a very humid climate also.)

 

[Michael Kellough]

Alex, since it's unlikely we'll ever be able to buy the CMS module
for the circular saws here can you give us some details
of how you mounted your saw in your table?

 

[EcoFurniture]

I waxed my MFT tops also. It happened to me in the past that people put wet or damp items on top of them, the MDF was soaking it up and swell...

But I don't think that moist air alone will do it any damage.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Alex, I found this quote of your's in another thread.

"A circular saw will never be my favourite. I always feel on edge when I use one. Just too easy to damage yourself with it."

Is that why you put you shackled your saw in the table?  ;D

 

[Les]

Well I put bulls eye seal coat on one table and poly and another. I was doing some cleaning the other day and laid a bottle of Lysol cleaner on the table coat with the bulls eye. The sticker on the top of the table in the corner had come off. Guess where bottle of Lysol was sitting when it developed a leak. I had a ~ 4" dia. bump about 7-8mm high. Of course I panicked and started scrapping the bump. Should have waited for the table to dry because after it did dry, I now have a concave spot in the table. Probably going to get the Bondo out. The reason for the bump was the area where the sticker had come off didn't have any Bulls eye on it. The surrounding surface repelled the moisture.       

Bottom line, it's like buying an insurance policy. I'll never be without insurance for my MFTs.               

 

[AlexThePalex]

Alex, I found this quote of your's in another thread.

"A circular saw will never be my favourite. I always feel on edge when I use one. Just too easy to damage yourself with it."

Is that why you put you shackled your saw in the table?  ;D

I do not not fully understand that last sentence of yours, it doesn't seem like totally correct English.

But yeah, I find the circular saw a scary machine. If you compare it with, say my Rotex or my jigsaw, then it can do a lot more damage. Does that mean I am not going to use it? Of course not. I am just going to be VERY aware of what I'm doing when I use it. Putting my circular saw under the table and making a tablesaw out of it adds a lot of functionality and is just as safe or unsafe as any other type of (factory made) tablesaw.

Knowing that it is a scary machine though will make sure I use every safety precaution I can think of when I use it. For instance, I use push sticks ALL the time. My fingers simply don't come in a 20 cm radius of that blade. I've seen a lot of professionals go with their fingers within an inch of it. I find that completely crazy. I'm too scared of it to do that.

So far it works for me. In one year of use I have hurt myself more with the Rotex than in 12 years of using my TS. Of course sanding over your fingers doesn't do much more damage than some scratches. But that happened to me more already than the number of incidents with my TS, which is an absolute 0. And I keep that 0 because it scares me. Not scared enough to not use it at all, but just scared enough to be very cautious.
 

 

[AlexThePalex]

Alex, since it's unlikely we'll ever be able to buy the CMS module
for the circular saws here can you give us some details
of how you mounted your saw in your table?

< Removed by Shane Holland, the post contained documentation and images of practices that could result in personal injury by using a power tool in a way that it is not intended to be used >

 

[Michael Kellough]

Alex, I found this quote of your's in another thread.

"A circular saw will never be my favourite. I always feel on edge when I use one. Just too easy to damage yourself with it."

Is that why you put you shackled your saw in the table?  ;D

I do not not fully understand that last sentence of yours, it doesn't seem like totally correct English.

Sorry about the sloppy lack of editing Alex.
I was going to say "put your saw in jail" and changed to "shackled" on the fly.

I understand your qualms about using the circular saw and your belief that it is
safer mounted in the table. I only added that post quoting you because of the
irony that UL is unlikely to ever approve a user mounted saw-in-table configuration
(even though it may be safer) so we're left making up less safe rigs on our own.

For the record, my first "table saw" was a Craftsman 7-1/4" circular saw similarly
bolted to a plywood table. The fence was a board clamped to the front edge of the
table and aligned to carefully drawn marks made parallel to the blade.

Very rudimentary but I did manage to make some basic furniture for our
unfurnished apartment using that saw and other cheap tools. That was 1978.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Alex, since it's unlikely we'll ever be able to buy the CMS module
for the circular saws here can you give us some details
of how you mounted your saw in your table?

My apologies Michael for not responding sooner but I must have missed this post before.

The saw is mounted in the table by using two screws. The base of the saw has two mounting holes in it, I drilled corresponding holes in the MDF top and mounted it with the screws. See the pics.

[attachimg=1]

[attachimg=2]

A more detailed posting about this table is in the works.

Thanks Alex. I really like your little finger pointers.

That's a very simple and effective solution but I was hoping you'd worked out
a clever quick way of using a Festool saw. I'd like to rig a TS 75 like that because
of it's depth of cut capacity but the first problem is getting it to stay plunged etc.
If we did figure it out we'd have to post elsewhere....

Your fence is way better than mine was back in the previous century. T-track extrusions
like that may not have existed then and if they did they were hard to find with no internet.
We had to buy expensive encyclopedia sized collections of company catalogs (Thomas Register)
to locate stuff like that.

Another thing you've used that I don't think I've seen here is that metal bracket joining your frame members. That looks pretty handy. Anyone seen that in the states?

 

[AlexThePalex]

I understand your qualms about using the circular saw and your belief that it is
safer mounted in the table. I only added that post quoting you because of the
irony that UL is unlikely to ever approve a user mounted saw-in-table configuration
(even though it may be safer) so we're left making up less safe rigs on our own.

Well, since I'm not from America but from Europe, I can't understand that position of UL at all. Here it is perfectly normal, legal and accepted to put your saw under the table in some kind of jig, be it a commercial product or something home built. There are numerous solutions available in the stores here. For instance, the CMS is one of them. I can't understand why UL, just one organisation, thinks that a method used by millions of grown up Europeans is too dangerous for Americans. UL treats you like little kids and I think it's a shame.

 

[AlexThePalex]

That's a very simple and effective solution but I was hoping you'd worked out
a clever quick way of using a Festool saw. I'd like to rig a TS 75 like that because
of it's depth of cut capacity but the first problem is getting it to stay plunged etc.
If we did figure it out we'd have to post elsewhere....

Well, sorry but I don't have a Festool saw. Not in my budget then and not right now. But how hard can it be? Just make some sort of bracket.

Your fence is way better than mine was back in the previous century. T-track extrusions
like that may not have existed then and if they did they were hard to find with no internet.
We had to buy expensive encyclopedia sized collections of company catalogs (Thomas Register)
to locate stuff like that.

It is no T-track. My table saw is also built before there was a real internet (or before I had it) and I hardly knew what a T-track was either. The sliders on my fence are just made from 20x20 mm square pipe aluminium, and the track they run in is completely square. They do fit very tightly though.

Another thing you've used that I don't think I've seen here is that metal bracket joining your frame members. That looks pretty handy. Anyone seen that in the states?

Come on, stop kidding me, you must have these metal corner brackets in the states too. They are available here in numerous variations of shape and size.

[attachimg=#]

 

[tbellemare]

UL treats you like little kids and I think it's a shame.

I think the big difference is the relative litigiousness of our societies and the avarice of the insurance companies here. UL is primarily a point of entry to liability insurance the way I understand things.

Tom

 

[PaulMarcel]

Well, since I'm not from America but from Europe, I can't understand that position of UL at all. Here it is perfectly normal, legal and accepted to put your saw under the table in some kind of jig, be it a commercial product or something home built. There are numerous solutions available in the stores here. For instance, the CMS is one of them. I can't understand why UL, just one organisation, thinks that a method used by millions of grown up Europeans is too dangerous for Americans. UL treats you like little kids and I think it's a shame.

[thumbs up]  yupper and it's sad.  I think more often than not, it is protecting some commercial interest more than treating us like kids, though.

 

[Nigel]

Another thing you've used that I don't think I've seen here is that metal bracket joining your frame members. That looks pretty handy. Anyone seen that in the states?

Come on, stop kidding me, you must have these metal corner brackets in the states too. They are available here in numerous variations of shape and size.

[attachimg=#]
[/quote]
Must be dangerous [wink]

 

[AlexThePalex]

UL treats you like little kids and I think it's a shame.

I think the big difference is the relative litigiousness of our societies and the avarice of the insurance companies here. UL is primarily a point of entry to liability insurance the way I understand things.

Tom and PaulMarcel, you're both right of course.  But ....... if here somebody cuts his finger, we simply say "Don't be stupid", and nobody is going to pay you one cent. However, in America, you can say: "The company who made this or sold it to me was stupid for not thinking about me doing stupid things with it". And you can sue for a lot of money and the company or its insurer has to pay.

Somehow this takes the responsibility away from the end user. Now regardless of whatever (financial) motive this has, I think that taking personal responsibility away is a form of treating people like kids.

 

[sw1211]

Another thing you've used that I don't think I've seen here is that metal bracket joining your frame members. That looks pretty handy. Anyone seen that in the states?

I'm sure the Depot carries various shapes/sizes, here's one.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Close Steve, this is half of what I was thinking off.

In the photo (since deleted thanks to our litigious society) it looked to me like two
of those brackets connected on one edge to form a 90* angle from the top (of this photo).
Perfect for quickly making a framed structure in 3 axis. Someone ought to make that.