Precise, portable table saw?

[curt boyer]

Tom and Treesner, I bought the JSS last November to replace a Dewalt 744( bigger Dewalt saw capable of using a dado blade). Both saws are and were mounted in my truck shop. I had some issues with the Dewalt such as lousy dust collection, fence going out of parallel, and very loud. It had great power and the ability to run a dado blade which was the reason I bought it. I built all my cabinets for the truck and all the dados with it. I've done the majority of my grooves and dados with a tablesaw or RAS. I think you get cleaner dados with a blade than a router bit especially the edges, less tear out. It's easier and faster to use the fence on the tablesaw than a router edge guide for making dados. With the saw you get better dust collection and a faster feed rate than a router. I still have the Dewalt which I mounted on the JSS rolling stand and use it for jobsite work and dados.

The one thing that no one has talked about is out feed which is almost as important as a good blade and fence for quality and repeatable results. Good out feed is also important for safety as it can help limit kick back. All the saws that you guys mentioned will do a very good job for you but with the stands that are offered with them have no provisions for out feed. The stands that you mount the saws to are heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to load and unload from your truck. They also take up a lot of room in the truck when stored. I'm spoiled by having nearly 12' of out feed support in my truck.

When I set up on a job I have A Makita 2703 mounted in a Rousseau stand with a Rousseau out feed table. The stand is solid when setup and compact when stored. With the out feed table attached it makes it even more stable. I've used this setup for the last 15 years with great effect as it is easy for one person to rip plywood and long lengths of solid wood. Since I got the TS55 I mainly use the tablesaw for solid wood and Azek. The Rousseau fence is strong, easy to adjust, and increases the rip capacity of your saw. The fence is steel which is nice for attaching sub fences and hold downs. The fence is also close to twice as long as the stock fences on the saws that you mentioned which makes it easier to get long straight rips. Once the saw stand and out feed table are set up you have a nice assembly table if your on a small site that doesn't have room for a dedicated table. I mounted a router to the right of the tablesaw on the stand which give me the ability to run moulding using the out feed table as well as the fence. I made a plywood router fence that slips over the Rousseau fence so that I have a ad hoc router table. I've since mounted a separate router fence independent of the tablesaw fence.
Cheers
Curt

 

[treesner]

Tom and Treesner, I bought the JSS last November to replace a Dewalt 744( bigger Dewalt saw capable of using a dado blade). Both saws are and were mounted in my truck shop. I had some issues with the Dewalt such as lousy dust collection, fence going out of parallel, and very loud. It had great power and the ability to run a dado blade which was the reason I bought it. I built all my cabinets for the truck and all the dados with it. I've done the majority of my grooves and dados with a tablesaw or RAS. I think you get cleaner dados with a blade than a router bit especially the edges, less tear out. It's easier and faster to use the fence on the tablesaw than a router edge guide for making dados. With the saw you get better dust collection and a faster feed rate than a router. I still have the Dewalt which I mounted on the JSS rolling stand and use it for jobsite work and dados.

The one thing that no one has talked about is out feed which is almost as important as a good blade and fence for quality and repeatable results. Good out feed is also important for safety as it can help limit kick back. All the saws that you guys mentioned will do a very good job for you but with the stands that are offered with them have no provisions for out feed. The stands that you mount the saws to are heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to load and unload from your truck. They also take up a lot of room in the truck when stored. I'm spoiled by having nearly 12' of out feed support in my truck.

When I set up on a job I have A Makita 2703 mounted in a Rousseau stand with a Rousseau out feed table. The stand is solid when setup and compact when stored. With the out feed table attached it makes it even more stable. I've used this setup for the last 15 years with great effect as it is easy for one person to rip plywood and long lengths of solid wood. Since I got the TS55 I mainly use the tablesaw for solid wood and Azek. The Rousseau fence is strong, easy to adjust, and increases the rip capacity of your saw. The fence is steel which is nice for attaching sub fences and hold downs. The fence is also close to twice as long as the stock fences on the saws that you mentioned which makes it easier to get long straight rips. Once the saw stand and out feed table are set up you have a nice assembly table if your on a small site that doesn't have room for a dedicated table. I mounted a router to the right of the tablesaw on the stand which give me the ability to run moulding using the out feed table as well as the fence. I made a plywood router fence that slips over the Rousseau fence so that I have a ad hoc router table. I've since mounted a separate router fence independent of the tablesaw fence.
Cheers
Curt

My neighbor had that makita/Rousseau stand setup and be loved it which is why I was considering one as an upgrade, although these newer saw fences are starting to get better. The dewal felt pretty good with the rack and pinion design. Do you think the stand is worth the extra weight and less portability?

 

[treesner]

Really haven't found any bad reviews on the bigger Bosch and dewalt. I think I'm going to go with the desalt as it just felt better in my opinion.

So now it comes down to stand either the dewalt 7490 that has its stand superate (with no wheels) this seems more portable as you can split the weight and just out the saw on a table without the stand. Verses the 7491 which is essentially the same saw but with 32" rip capacity vs 24 and the stand is bolted to the saw which looks sturdy and also has wheels, but overall it makes its footprint open and stored bigger/heavier

 

[treesner]

[attachimg=1]

 

[treesner]

[attachimg=1]

 

[Iceclimber]

My two cents,

Get the 32" Dewalt on the wheeled cart.

I have been using that saw at work everyday for the last three months. I love the saw. Previously i was using a Bosch with the Gravity Rise. The Bosch finally let out a puff of smoke and had enough. Bosch was a good Saw not great.

Im not much of a Dewalt far but this saw had really won over. The fence is by far the best job site saw fence ever. The saw and stand is bomber and indestructible unlike saws with a plastic base. I have yet to have it bog down on anything. I literally almost throw full 5/8 plywood through it daily and it moves as fast as i can.

I also own a SawStop 5hrs Industrial. Sure it a way better saw but im not bringing it to the job. I am unimpressed by the jobsite saw. It is very very plasticky and seems really really cheap. I love a good reason to spend way to much money on a tool but the SawStop does nothing for me. Remember i own a industrial SawStop and love it.

Good luck..

 

[HDClown]

I've got a DWE7490X.  I was originally thinking I'd go all out and get the DWE7491RS since it's the overall best deal, by far, but I found a stupid good deal for a brand new 7490X on CL that was probably "hot", but I wasn't going to say anything. I also ultimately decided that I didn't need the wheeled gravity rise stand since I'm just using the saw at home, and the extra storage space the wheeled stand consumed was undesirable for me.

The 7490X as a total weight of 58 lbs and the 7491RS a total weight of 90 lbs.  That's with the stands attached.  Overall footprint of the DWE7941RS when stored is quite a bit bigger than the 7490X when you consider them stored "on their side".  Pretty obvious as to why, you take the 7490X of it's stand to do that, and then fold up the stand and sit it up against the saw. 

Putting the 7490X on it's stand is fairly easy.  Lining it up right may take a 2nd try.  To properly secure the 7490X to the stand you need to install 4 carriage bolts and bolt them in with your typical hand tools  This is the biggest downside to the scissor stand.  DeWalt really should have made their scissor stand tool less mount.  So setup/teardown adds extra 2 minutes or so dealing with the stand, where as setup/tear down on the 7491RS would be seconds when dealing with the stand.    You can carry the 7490 around when it's not on its stand nicely with the carry handle but you're still carrying 50 lbs or so.

I find the scissor stand to have adequate support but likely nowhere near as sturdy as the rolling stand. In my case, I've got a TS55, so I'm never going to be putting full 4x8 sheets through the table saw where I might possibly have some concern with the scissor stand.  The saw isn't going to tip over, but you may not be as confident in the stand if you're pushing through thick full sheets.

You can put the rolling stand that the 7491RS comes with on the 7490, the stand itself is DWE74911 and it comes with adaptors needed for the 7490 (as well as 7480 and older 745).  but doing that after the fact would mean you're spending an extra $60 to do it as the stand itself is $130, so that seems kind of silly.  You can also use the universal DW7440RS rolling stand but that's $155.

If you think you want/need the rolling stand, just buy the 7491RS up front for the $80 more than the 7490X (yand also gain the benefit of some extra rip capacity in the fence.  It's a really good deal when you see the standalone cost of just the stand.  But, should you be uncertain, at least know you can add the rolling cart if things change down the road. 

As far as Bosch vs. DeWalt, the thing that you will most find why people picked a DeWalt option is their rack & pinion fence.  I read lots of reviews on table saws over many months and the DeWalt fence setup was always raved about.  The biggest letdown was the lame included miter gauge and slop it has, but this is pretty typical complaint across all the job site saws.  An Incra gauge solves that problem quickly.  Other than a few negative comments here on FOG about the DeWalt saws accuracy or power, I never once found those comments on other forums/blogs/etc. 

Tool Box Buzz has some nice short reviews with good pictures on both the 7490X and the 7491X that you may want to check out.

 

[treesner]

My two cents,

Get the 32" Dewalt on the wheeled cart.

I have been using that saw at work everyday for the last three months. I love the saw. Previously i was using a Bosch with the Gravity Rise. The Bosch finally let out a puff of smoke and had enough. Bosch was a good Saw not great.

Im not much of a Dewalt far but this saw had really won over. The fence is by far the best job site saw fence ever. The saw and stand is bomber and indestructible unlike saws with a plastic base. I have yet to have it bog down on anything. I literally almost throw full 5/8 plywood through it daily and it moves as fast as i can.

I also own a SawStop 5hrs Industrial. Sure it a way better saw but im not bringing it to the job. I am unimpressed by the jobsite saw. It is very very plasticky and seems really really cheap. I love a good reason to spend way to much money on a tool but the SawStop does nothing for me. Remember i own a industrial SawStop and love it.

Good luck..

You're hitting all the points I've been thinking of, good to hear some confirmation

 

[treesner]

My two cents,

Get the 32" Dewalt on the wheeled cart.

I have been using that saw at work everyday for the last three months. I love the saw. Previously i was using a Bosch with the Gravity Rise. The Bosch finally let out a puff of smoke and had enough. Bosch was a good Saw not great.

Im not much of a Dewalt far but this saw had really won over. The fence is by far the best job site saw fence ever. The saw and stand is bomber and indestructible unlike saws with a plastic base. I have yet to have it bog down on anything. I literally almost throw full 5/8 plywood through it daily and it moves as fast as i can.

I also own a SawStop 5hrs Industrial. Sure it a way better saw but im not bringing it to the job. I am unimpressed by the jobsite saw. It is very very plasticky and seems really really cheap. I love a good reason to spend way to much money on a tool but the SawStop does nothing for me. Remember i own a industrial SawStop and love it.

Good luck..

You're hitting all the points I've been thinking of, good to hear some confirmation

I really like the space savings of the 7490 and lighter to carry but you make a good point of the stand value. I think if I was able to figure out a way to rig a quick release on the 7491 I'd be a happy camper. Might have to go this route. If the stand is bulky I can always take it off and just throw the saw itself on some saw horses

 

[Brice Burrell]

I have the DeWalt DWE7490X, I'll write a review and link it here. 
Here's the review, I put it in the "other tools review" section.  DeWalt DWE7490X jobsite table saw review

 

[curt boyer]

Treesner I've used the Dewalt saws both old and new and I think they're great saws. We use the small 745 in a Rousseau stand and scissor stand. Both stands take up a small amount of storage space in the trucks.

When broken down the Rousseau stand is about 4" thick so it's pretty easy to find a spot for it in the truck. The advantage of the stand is the out feed table which gives support as well as a work table. I can rip plywood by my self with the out feed support. You can't do that with the gravity, rolling, and drone(CIA covert carpentry division) stands.

When you attach the saws permanently to the stands you add weight, size, and limit what one person can move upstairs without trashing walls or hurting yourself. if you have a trailer or a low truck that one person can comfortably load and unload a mounted saw then that would be a good option. We work in some small jobsites and a mounted saw would not work for us. We unfortunately don't have any cheap grunts to move equipment around. We usually work in at least two man teams though lately there has been some occasions where there is only one of us. Unless you ripping 18' Azek(wide flat spaghetti) one person should be able to rip materials by himself. We can't afford to have two men tied up on the tablesaw.

The new Dewalt saws have some nice improvements over the older Dewalt saws that make them a good choice for the price. But the JSS has a lot of features that you already noted that make it a much better saw than the Dewalts. I change the bevel angle and blade height a lot during the course of the day and the Sawstop is so much faster and easier to adjust than any other portable saw.
Cheers
Curt

 

[treesner]

Treesner I've used the Dewalt saws both old and new and I think they're great saws. We use the small 745 in a Rousseau stand and scissor stand. Both stands take up a small amount of storage space in the trucks.

When broken down the Rousseau stand is about 4" thick so it's pretty easy to find a spot for it in the truck. The advantage of the stand is the out feed table which gives support as well as a work table. I can rip plywood by my self with the out feed support. You can't do that with the gravity, rolling, and drone(CIA covert carpentry division) stands.

When you attach the saws permanently to the stands you add weight, size, and limit what one person can move upstairs without trashing walls or hurting yourself. if you have a trailer or a low truck that one person can comfortably load and unload a mounted saw then that would be a good option. We work in some small jobsites and a mounted saw would not work for us. We unfortunately don't have any cheap grunts to move equipment around. We usually work in at least two man teams though lately there has been some occasions where there is only one of us. Unless you ripping 18' Azek(wide flat spaghetti) one person should be able to rip materials by himself. We can't afford to have two men tied up on the tablesaw.

The new Dewalt saws have some nice improvements over the older Dewalt saws that make them a good choice for the price. But the JSS has a lot of features that you already noted that make it a much better saw than the Dewalts. I change the bevel angle and blade height a lot during the course of the day and the Sawstop is so much faster and easier to adjust than any other portable saw.
Cheers
Curt

I could see the 745 and Rousseau beings very nice setup for its breakdown in weight and sturdy table/fence. If it accepted dados I would probably go with that with the thought that sometime later down the road I'll get a shop and full size table saw but in the meantime don't think it'll give me the versatility.

Do you have to pull the saw out of the stand to transport it? And is it a pain to pull in and out of the stand?

 

[curt boyer]

The saw just drops into stand and your ready to go. When your done just lift up the saw and go. My older stand can accommodate the 2703 Makita as well as my 744 Dewalt which can accept a dado blade. Rousseau makes stands for Dewalt's new saws. If you get the bigger saw that has the ability to do dados you would have a fairly portable and capable system.

If you go small get the DWE7480 over the 745 as it is the same size and has 4" more rip capacity as well as a few improvements over the older saw. Then you can buy the router insert extension table which would give you 49" of rip capacity and a sturdy router table for dados or onsite milling operations. Or you can do what I did and cut in a router table insert in Rousseau table. Make sure you get the out feed table because you can you that as a work table and if you drill it with 20mm holes it makes for a nice mini mft. New saw, stand, out feed stand, and router insert is a fair bit of money but you've got a flexible system that wil let you handle anything that comes your way.
Cheers
Curt

 

[tiralie]

Why did you upgrade the fence, I was planning on this setup for the fence.

I wanted to be able to drop the fence on my setup and not have to reset it or re-calibrate it. I have a Vega "Utility" fence attached to my Rousseau stand. The whole thing breaks down into 3 separate pieces if I need to move it.

Since I don't move my Bosch 4100 and my Rousseau much any more I would definitely defer to Curt's comments on ease of use and set-up. I am sure he has moved his saw more in one year than I have in the last 5.

I have the fence for my Rousseau in storage.

Like you I was moving my saw up and down my basement stairs and having the saw separate from the stand really helped getting around some tight corners. I have the outfeed but have never used it because I changed the level that my saw sits in the Rousseau stand. I use some Rigid flip top stands which I can adjust the height of.
It is a bit of work to get the saw in the stand but it's not any harder than hauling a stack of 2x4's in a house etc.
I really like the stability of the Rousseau stand and highly recommend it if you want or need stability.

Any knowledge of this setup vs the sawstop (without rousseau)

I don't have any experience with the Sawstop, but I would defer to Curt's detailed comments. If I was in the market for a direct drive saw, I would definitely get the Sawstop.
Tim

 

[curt boyer]

Tim do you have any pics of the Vega fence on your Rousseau stand? I changed the height of my saw too, I made a shim so that I could still use the out feed stand. The stand really bolsters the saw stand when your ripping plywood, long boards, or 2x's. I replaced the stock laminate top on the out feed table with MDO which is lighter and take the moisture if it gets rained on when we're setup outside. I installed a Kreg clamping plate in the end of the table to help with pocket screw work as well as a hold down for onsite bench work. I'm going to drill it out for an mft style work surface that would enable me to use the Bessey, Kreg, and Festool clamping elements.
Cheers
Curt

 

[tiralie]

Tim do you have any pics of the Vega fence on your Rousseau stand?

Here you go...and to think I have spent the last two days "cleaning"...pathetic really. Let me know if you need more details etc.
I milled a piece of maple to just fit into the Rousseau rail, and then drilled and bolted the Vega rail to the Rousseau rail. It doesn't move, it's solid. You can adjust the Vega rail to the blade.

I also added some new aluminum caps for the front and back of Vega fence. I didn't like the ones they had on them...too sharp and I would probably cut myself on them packing and unpacking them in the car.
[attachimg=1]

Here is a side view, I used the bolt holes for the Bosch fence to attach aluminum L brackets running the full length on both sides, which holds the other end (right side) of the table extension in place giving me a little more surface area on the left of the blade...and it holds lots of crap too. as you can see...

[attachimg=2]

 

[curt boyer]

Thanks for the pics Tim, your shop looks like my storage unit!