From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Subject: Saws: BT3000 vs. Delta Contractor's
Organization: OSF Research Institute
Date: 14 Dec 92 14:31:28

Below please find my first attempt at a "BT-3000 vs. the Contractor's
Saw" FAQ.  I would appreciate any and all comments, corrections, and
queries, which I will try to fold back in.  I would in particular like
more information on the Powermatic, both from those who like it and
those who don't.  Thanks to my many correspondents for their comments
so far.

	-s

----------------

This note summarizes what I've learned about middle-priced table saws.

I asked for the net's advice on table saws a while ago and summarized
the responses.  Since then, I bought a Ryobi BT-3000 (henceforth the
Ryobi), put it together, returned it, bought a Delta Contractor's
(henceforth the DC) saw, put it together, and started using it.

For reference, the best recent prices in the Boston area, normalized
to comparable configurations:

Ryobi: $538-49 (with carbide blade, stand, and instructional video) at
    HQ, Home Depot, Trendlines, etc.  I hear that Hechinger's (none in
    Boston) has them on sale for $469 or so (with blade and stand).

DC: $499 at Spag's in Shrewsbury, MA (with steel blade and stand);
    Trendlines will match price.  For comparability, add carbide blade
    ($35) = $534.  Note: one suggestion was to wait for Spag's lowest
    price, then have an HQ store in New Hampshire beat it (they beat
    others' prices by 10%, and N.H. has no sales tax).  But Spag's
    often has _unadvertised_ specials -- and I didn't feel like
    studying the ads in the Worcester Sunday paper for six months.

DC + 30" Unifence: $699 at Trendlines + $35 blade + $70 table board -
    $50 rebate = $754.  Buying a Unifence separately ($250 at
    Trendlines) would leave you with an extra wing, fence, and rail.

DC clones (Grizzly G1022, Reliant, AMT, Jet...): about $350 + $35 = $385

Powermatic Artisan 63: I have not seen this saw, and don't know much
    about it.  It is similar to the DC: some say it's (much) better,
    others say it's overpriced.  I'll ignore it for the rest of this
    posting.

Sears Contractor's: $499.  Appears inferior to DC in many ways
    (carriage (lighter), miter gauge (no stops), miter slot (not T),
    motor (smaller)...), and at same price, so excluded from
    discussion.  But it _does_ have cast wings.

The Ryobi is probably the most widely distributed, and is available in
most discount home centers as well as tool stores.  The DC is marketed
more through tool stores; discount centers sometimes have it, but
usually not the Unifence.  Reliant is sold only by Trendlines, which
has retail stores in Massachusetts and also has a catalogue business.
Grizzly has a showroom in Pennsylvania and one in Washington State
(?), and does not have dealers.  There are dealers for some of the
clones.  Figure shipping costs of very roughly $50 for any of these
saws.

Correspondents agreed that the clones have relatively poor quality
control, and that the DC is better.  Even the Trendlines salesman
deprecated the Reliant (their house label).  Grizzly seems to have the
best reputation among the clones (cf. FAQ), but I have seen no good
evidence supporting this or any other differentiation among the
clones.  Delta isn't perfect, for that matter, either (see below).

So the choice for me came down to Ryobi vs. DC.  I had decided to get
a DC+Unifence, but at the last minute (at the store, after discussion
with salesman and another client) changed my mind and got the Ryobi.
After putting it together and fiddling with it, I decided to go back
to the DC.  My notes on this below.

My applications include rough temporary shelving and cabinetry to
start, later more elaborate 32mm system cabinetry of various kinds,
and after that other furniture, jewelry boxes, etc.

----------------

The Ryobi

The Ryobi BT-3000 Precision Benchtop Cutting System is a lightweight
(75 lb) 10" benchtop table saw, usually sold with a stand.  It has a
110v/13 amp universal motor (claimed as 2 hp, although according to
Roche's motor FAQ, 13 amps corresponds to ~1.44 hp) mounted within the
saw's case, connected to the arbor by a toothed belt.  It is switched
by a magnetic switch with a plastic lock plate (can't turn on without
it); the ON switch is recessed, and the OFF switch is exposed.  The
arbor rotates at 5500 rpm.  Its rip fence is a T-square type, locking
both front and back.  It has a sliding table for crosscuts, and an
"accessory table" to which a router can be mounted ($70 for kit).
These movable tables and the central table are all aluminum.  Both the
sliding table and the accessory table are mounted on a pair of
extruded aluminum rails, which can be shifted to give support to one
side or another.  The tables easily detach and reattach where you need
them.  The blade is housed in such a way that there is a strong
positive air flow to a dust bag (optional), for which there is an
outlet in back (which can also be used with a shop vac or dust
collector).

The saw comes with a Freud 36-tooth thin-kerf flat-top carbide blade
intended as a combination blade, identical (according to Freud) to the
TK406 except for the number of teeth (the TK406 has 60, which is too
many for ripping) and some extra slots in the body of the blade (like
on Freud's deck blade -- they presumably allow for expansion under
heavy cutting loads).  Freud prefers a 24-tooth for ripping and a
60-tooth for all else, but 36 is a fine compromise if you want a
single blade.

Blade height and angle are adjusted by the same wheel on the front of
the saw, with a lever to switch modes; it takes a couple of tries to
get the knack, but seems to work just fine -- the main trick is to
make sure the wheel doesn't move as you lock it.  Maximum depth of cut
is 3 9/16"; most 10" saws only manage 3 1/8" or so.  You can buy
accessory extension rails ($120) which extend its rip capacity to 72";
it is designed so that a 3/4" sheet of plywood (not supplied) works as
a table board.  ((Ryobi owners: I've forgotten the measurements of the
table and the maximum rip width _without_ the extension; can you fill
me in?))

Ryobi currently only sells the 36-tooth combination blade, and does
not recommend using other manufacturers' blades (although I see no
reason not to use other thin kerf blades--perhaps the torque curve of
the motor is such that the precise characteristics of the blade
matter?  I doubt it); they will probably come out with additional
blades soon.  They will apparently also be coming out with a tenoning
jig soon.  The throat plate is a rectangle of thick sheet metal, and
screws down; it is not adjustable in height.  Ryobi sells an optional
dado throat plate.  It is not clear how you would make a custom throat
plate, since wood or plastic in this thickness is probably not stiff
enough; perhaps Ryobi will come out with some high-tech plastic throat
plate blank which is stiff but not hard or brittle....

The saw is quite portable.  It weighs only 75 pounds.  With the
optional casters, you can move it like a wheelbarrow, or easily swivel
it 90 degrees (useful if you have a workshop where long stock will
only fit one way).  The sliding table, fence, and accessory table can
be removed and replaced quickly, as can the fence rails.  The blade
guard is a bit more finicky -- you have to remove the throat plate
(three screws) and unbolt the guard (two bolts).  With these parts
off, the saw consists of a sturdy metal box on a sturdy stand, and can
thus easily be moved through tight openings or up stairs, and thrown
into the back of a truck.

The Ryobi has a variety of thoughtfully-designed features in almost
every department.  Obviously Ryobi put a lot of effort into making the
best-featured saw they could, and they included a lot of useful
features.  Also, it is claimed to be delivered fully aligned.

Several correspondents on the net have been very happy with it.  One
is building a timber-frame house with one (this should be a good test
of robustness!).  He burned out the motor, but Ryobi replaced it for
free.  Fine Homebuilding had a brief review of it, and generally liked
it, especially its depth of cut (enough for a 4x4 in one pass).  Fine
Woodworking had a comparative review of sliding table and sliding
carriage saws, where they slightly preferred it to the Makita
sliding-table saw, but did not compare it to conventional table saws.
(They liked the Mafell Erika sliding-carriage saw best, but it costs
several times more.)

According to Ryobi's advertising (in FWW), the intended market for
this saw is "tradesmen and serious woodworkers" (an odd couple).
Clearly it's not addressed to professional cabinetmakers.  The ad
emphasizes that it's "easy to move around the shop or job site".  The
illustrations show a job site with someone who looks like a carpenter.
The salesman told me the saw had been field-tested by contractors
before its release.  All this seems to add up to the primary target
market being job site carpentry, for those carpenters who need more
versatility than the typical benchtop saw, which is really only good
for ripping.  Still, around here, most such carpenters have a cheap
benchtop saw and a good miter saw (the Hitachi sliding miter saw is a
favorite): accurate cut-off and mitering seem frequent and critical in
their trade, while ripping is less so.  Panel cutting is done with a
hand-held circular saw.  Compared to the trio of cheap benchtop, good
miter, and handheld circular saw, the BT3000 probably rips better
(better fence), miters almost as well for short but not long stock
(not as good support), and cuts panels faster and more accurately (the
Ryobi with the table extension compared with a circular saw following
a pencil mark), or at least faster (comparing with a circular saw
following a clamp-down guide).

----------------

The Delta Contractor's Saw

The DC is a medium-weight (200 lb) 10" table saw.  It has an 14.2 amp
(1.5 hp) induction motor hanging off the back, exposed (which can run
on 110v or 220v, for what little that's worth), controlled by a toggle
switch (with a bracket for a padlock).  Its main table is cast iron,
and it has two rather imprecise sheet-metal extensions.  It comes with
an ordinary steel blade.  Its design is traditional.  It has no
provisions for dust collection.

Its rip fence (Jet Lock) is known for not being particularly good.
Most correspondents recommend replacing it with a Unifence (available
for 30" or 52" rip width).  The table board for the Unifence (which
replaces the saw's right extension wing) is a separate option ($70 or
$100 respectively) of laminate-covered particleboard.  You can make
one yourself, of course.  The Unifence consists of a large aluminum
extrusion that mounts on the front of the saw and extensions, a
T-square clamp, and an extruded fence.  The fence can be mounted to
the left or the right of the clamp; changing sides takes about a
minute.  It can be mounted upright, giving a standard fence height, or
on its side, which gives a narrow fence useful for sawing untrimmed
laminated boards.  It can also be pulled halfway out, clear of the
blade, making for a very quick and handy length cutoff gauge.  The
clamp is a heavy casting with a center lock and two side runners,
which runs easily on the track (it does hang up on the miter slot
sometimes, though).  Squareness is easily adjustable.  Mounting and
dismounting the fence/clamp assembly is very quick.  The Unifence
gauge is marked from 0-32" and 0-810mm.  The first foot is divided
into 1/32", 1/16" thereafter.  There is no "fine adjustment" knob, and
setting the reading right on is a bit finicky.  The cursor is
adjustable.  There is no gauge to the left of the blade (presumably
because blades vary in thickness, but then they vary in set, too).

The DC has a T-shaped standard-size miter slot.  The miter gauge has
adjustable stops at 45, 90, and 45 degrees.  It runs smoothly and with
little slop.

The undercarriage of the DC is basically the same as on Delta's
Tilting Arbor Cabinet Saw.  The Cabinet saw has a stronger motor
(2hp), an enclosed base, machined cast iron wings, and a magnetic
switch.

The DC's throat plate is an iron casting with adjustment screws for
height.  It is thick enough that you can make a replacement throat
plate out of common materials; on the other hand, its ends are
rounded, so you won't be able to cut it to shape on the table saw.

Putting together the Contractor's Saw is a completely different story
from the Ryobi.  At almost every step, you need to align things and
fiddle with them.  The instructions are pretty good, and include
copious photos with identification of parts, but sometimes leave out
tips that might be useful (e.g. how accurately does the motor pulley
need to line up with the arbor pulley?).  In several cases, you need
to loosen the screws that are holding something up, realign it, then
tighten the screws, all while supporting the thing (with your third
hand, I guess).  Lining up the wings and table board is finicky and
time-consuming.  I have not yet aligned the blade with the miter slots
(this is supposed to be factory-set), but I understand it is a real
pain.  I pretty much expect this sort of thing with the DC (unlike the
Ryobi).  The Ryobi is much easier to put together, and adjustments are
easy to make (although I do have doubts about their accuracy and
stability).  There were a few minor pieces missing (some washers) and
one non-critical piece had a hole drilled 1/4" off from where it
should have been.

Whereas Ryobi assumes that you have only a framing square, a
screwdriver, and a single socket wrench, Delta assumes you have a
straightedge, a combination square, a set of Allen wrenches, and a set
of sockets.  Reasonable enough, but it's a different mentality.  When
I called up about the misdrilled part, they were very helpful, and
mailed it out immediately with zero paperwork.  (In the meantime, I
enlarged the hole into a slot with a milling machine, but not everyone
has access to one.)

Moving the Contractor's saw is a big operation.  Even if you just have
to move it from one side of a room to the other, you'll need help,
because of its weight (you can get casters, though).  To move it
through a door, you'll need to take off the extension wings (which as
I mentioned are a pain to line up again) and table board (if any).  To
move it any distance, you'll want to take off the motor -- this is
easy.  Even with everything taken off, the saw is still heavy, and
will need two people to move.  I hate to think of moving it up or down
stairs.

Delta's philosophy appears to be to make the saw solid, but basic.
For instance, instead of providing adjustable feet for the stand (for
which the legs are pre-threaded), they suggest tightening up the stand
after placing it on the floor.  Unlike the Ryobi, it has no rubber
feet.  Much of the safety and comfort equipment is missing or an
afterthought.  For instance, the motor sticks out the back of the saw,
with the belt only covered for half its run with a plastic cowl.  The
blade guard is less well thought out than the Ryobi's.  The DC has no
provision for dust collection, and all the internals of the saw are
exposed to dust; and there is no obvious way to enclose the frame so
that an add-on dust collector's air flow would be concentrated.  In
particular, since the motor hangs out the back, the path of the drive
belt must be left open.  Also, dust escapes between the top casting
and the frame, as well as through the height adjustment crank's slot.
You can buy a plastic bottom for the case into which you can plug a
shop vac, but it will presumably be less effective than the Ryobi.

As far as I can tell, once you have a given length of Unifence rail,
you cannot extend it without completely taking it apart and
realigning, unlike the Ryobi.  Again, the DC system is likely more
accurate, but the Ryobi system is more convenient.  Given the pulley
geometry for bevel cuts, it appears that an outfeed table on the DC
has to be carefully spaced from the principal table.

The blade height and angle locks just clamp down the cranks by
screwing down; not a big deal, but there's nothing preventing them
from getting completely unscrewed.

To get the crosscutting capabilities of the Ryobi, you probably need
to build a crosscut box.

----------------

So these are two very different saws.  In terms of features and
thoughtful engineering, the Ryobi is clearly far superior.  It has a
built-in sliding table, better dust collection, an enclosed motor,
better packaging, better switch, better standard fence, cleverer
accessories.  The Ryobi is quite portable, while the DC is a bear (but
can be moved to a job site, unlike a Unisaw).

So where's the trade-off?  The Ryobi appears less robust.  It has many
plastic parts, including wear parts like the sliding table slides.  I
broke the miter gauge stop as I was putting it together, and soon
thereafter broke the bracket designed to hold the miter gauge.  Other
correspondents have done similar things.  But I wasn't too worried
about robustness, since I don't expect to use it intensively
(certainly not to build a house!).  It feels a little strange when you
fiddle with the miter gauge--a critical part is a nylon post.  On the
other hand, the miter gauge is very long, and looks as though angle
readings will be very accurate.  It does have a weak point, though:
its ends are plastic (to avoid damaging the blade in case they hit
it), and are very easily bent out of shape.  This could easily screw
up an accurate angle setting.

I was hoping to use the Ryobi "out of the box".  Assembly was in fact
quite trivial (putting together the stand took longer than anything
else) -- unlike the DC.  No parts were missing or defective.  Then I
started verifying squareness and so on.  This is where I started
having doubts.  Some checks came out OK (blade square to table).  My
sliding table turned out to be about 3/64" higher than the main table,
and the accessory table about 1/64" lower.  Strange.  I rechecked my
assembly, and the instructions, and saw nothing about this, nor any
way to adjust it.  I phoned Ryobi and they told me this was
intentional, so cross cuts wouldn't hang up on the central table.
That's fine as far as it goes, but it also means that rips won't be
square, by roughly a degree.  But, they added, they had a free kit
they would send me which would bring the sliding table back to level
with the main table -- this involves drilling some new holes; as for
the accessory table, the kit includes some metallic tape that can be
used to "shim" it up....  Not really satisfactory, I thought.  Then I
started checking the sliding table.  As received, it wobbled by about
3/32 from side to side.  Pretty poor.  So I tightened it up so it had
essentially no play.  But then it doesn't slide very well.  An
intermediate position seemed better, but not likely to stay that way
very long.  I checked the table parallelism; it was off by 3/32" from
the front position to the back.  I aligned it to roughly 1/64" without
too much trouble.  The rip fence was off by 1/16", but was also easily
aligned within about 1/64".  So much for being delivered aligned from
the factory.  

Now all this I did following the directions that came with the saw.
They call for using a framing square for alignment.  Doesn't give you
a great feeling of accuracy when the closest markings are 1/16" apart.
I was beginning to think that I had the wrong tool, not because it
required alignment (that seems normal, despite their advertising), but
because I didn't feel confident in the alignment I was doing, and
didn't get the warm fuzzies about the stability of the alignment.  So
the Ryobi's strong point here is that it is VERY quick and easy to
align fairly accurately, but hard to align very accurately, and I
would guess likely to go out of fine alignment.

All of this is quite subjective, since I have not run a single piece
of wood through the saw (that would void my right to return it to the
store).

Now, with my doubts aroused, I talked to the salesmen and to the net
wisdom (in the form of Bennett Leeds) again.  I finally understood the
niche the Ryobi is trying to fill.  In my mind, it was for the
hobbyist trying to do precision work.  In fact, it is more aimed at 1)
the contractor who needs a portable saw that is as versatile as
possible, and doesn't require a host of jigs and 2) the homeowner
doing home improvements and 3) (marginally) the hobbyist who has to be
able to get it out of the way easily.  Since my application is
stationary, the requirement for jigs is not a problem (although I do
have concerns about the time and care needed to make good ones).
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