Thread: GMC table saw - making it better

Hi

is it one of these;



<!--[endif]-->

G'day Blue Penguin.
Is it one of them....... that Dazzler posted a photo of????
If so, I've had one for about 4 years and use it everyday. It has had major works done on it, and lots of jigs to make it do what a good table saw should do.
If we have the right beastie, then I can post some photos of the jigs so far.
Regards,
Noel
ps...I'm just about to pull it apart again for another tune-up, and an attempt to get the dust extraction working efficiently.

Yes, that's the one - 2000W, 254mm. Dust extraction is also something I want to look at (as I am currently forced to work in a back room of the house, as we are renting and have no other space suitable). Thanks guys.

OK blue...that's the one I've got too.
There's a good thread or two here on table saw tune ups which it will require.
It will also need a good quality blade......CMT/ Irwin/ Infinity or similar. I'd get a blade before doing the tune-up, as it would make things easier in the long run.
There are obvious faults with the machine....hence its price.....but with a bit of work they can be over come.
I have made the following jigs for mine:
Taper jig
Cross-cutting sled
Key mitre slot jig
Zero clearance insert
Mitre cutting sled
Mitre slot feather boards
Micro adjustable ripping fence
Tenoning jig.
Indexing jig

I also use a combination blade so that the kerf is flat. Its an Infinity blade from Northwood Tool Company. I had to get it drilled out to the correct arbour size, only 'cos I was impatient.
The dust extraction really is bad, so I'm working on getting it better.
I built a mini-cyclone dust extractor yesterday, but the guts still fills up with dust and crud. If you want any photos of the jigs etc, let me know what ones you want and I'll take some pics.
Regards,
Noel

Originally Posted by watson

I have made the following jigs for mine:
Taper jig
Cross-cutting sled
Key mitre slot jig
Zero clearance insert
Mitre cutting sled
Mitre slot feather boards
Micro adjustable ripping fence
Tenoning jig.
Indexing jig

Can I be really greedy and say "all of them"?

The ones of more immediate use to me would be the cross-cutting and mitre sleds, the ripping fence, and the tenoning jig, as these are all required for jobs I have in mind in the near future. The others would all still be very useful for the longer term though. Whatever information and assistance you have the time and inclination to provide, I would be most appreciative to receive.

It apparently has already had the blade replaced, but I'm not sure of the type. What is the zero clearance insert mod required for?

Thanks again.

G'day Blue penguin,
The zero clearance insert makes sure you get a cleaner cut, and when cutting thin strips it prevents the strips from falling down alongside the blade and then flinging themselves all over the place.
PM me your address and I'll send you a cd with all the jigs in pdf format, 'cos they'd just consume too much space here.
Regards,
Noel

Can I suggest that if someone has actually found a way to turn a sows ear into a workable tablesaw, it would be very valuable to have pics available here. If the images are saved as JPGs before adding to a PDF, they shouldn't be too large. Just as JPGs would be fine and a half mb of jpg is a pretty big image.

This is a series of posts on how I made my GMC table saw workable (for me).

The Bloody Manufacturer’s Fence (BMF)
Luckily, my BMF tightens up parallel to the mitre slots, but the side of the fence is grooved as in PICTURE 1.
This makes it really hard to measure between the blade edge and the fence and you can be a couple of millimetres out if you don’t measure from the “out” bits.
I know there is a permanent scale on the machine, but I don’t trust it, so I measure each cut with a steel rule, and in any case, due to really poor dust extraction, the sight slot for the ruler fills with sawdust.

Jig #1
To make my fence I used 12mm mdf made in a “T” shape (rotated 90&#186 with a 12mm rabbet to fix the horizontal piece so that it sits on top of the BMF and the vertical piece sits flush against the BMF and sits on the saw table. (PICTURE 2).
I routed two 6.5 mm slots in the horizontal piece so that the jig is held to the BMF using 6mm bolts with wing nuts, and the head of the bolts ride in the slot provided.
(PICTURE 3)

The Jig has a centrally located 6mm insert which is used to attach a spring loaded hold-down for stopping the workpiece riding up. (PICTURE 4)
I use the jig for ripping - re-sawing - slitting and grooving and rabetting.

The two wing nuts allow the the jig to be moved out from the fixed BMF to allow Masonite and MDF slats to be inserted between the jig and the BMF to make dado cuts and rebates wider than the saw kerf. I use about 6 slats of each type (12mm -6mm -3mm) in various configurations. (Picture 5)
The slats are replaced by a number of playing cards to allow fine adjustment when grooving slots for veneered panels. As a rule of thumb, 4 playing cards are inserted after the initial groove is cut, and this widens the groove on the second run enough to fit a 3mm MDF panel veneered both sides.
By the way, you can’t groove with the GMC table saw as delivered, as they made the riving knife taller than the blade. I removed it, and cut a bit off, then threw their guard and anti-kickback thingo in the garbage. More on that later.
The Jig #1 also provides the runner for a Tenoning Jig (PICTURE 6).

The next few posts will include (When I get ‘em ready)
Tenoning Jig
a cross cut sled
a 45&#186; mitre sled
an adjustable Taper Jig
an indexing jig for making mitre-slot feather boards
a zero clearance insert
a crown guard with dust extractor
and a Table-saw jointing jig.

With the addition of a very good Infinity Saw Blade (from Northwood) these jigs make life with a GMC table saw a hell of a lot easier....... If only I could work out an effective dust extraction system for the main chassis!!

Regards,
Noel

Extra Pictures

I gave mine a go on the weekend to test it out, and immediately went back to using my friend's Triton as I just couldn't trust the GMC to do the job properly in its present form.

Firstly, there were the concerns regarding the fence, which I simply don't trust when it's only fixed at one end.

Secondly, and of greater concern, was the unbelievable amount of friction from the surface of the table. Sure, it is smooth enough to the touch, but this is a surface that you're meant to be able to slide a piece of wood across with ease...except that you can't!

I just went out to have a look at it, and was thinking of taking off one of the extensions and bolting on something of my own creation in its place, using the bolt holes along the back side of the carcass so I can fix a fence on properly secured at both ends. And while inspecting it, I noticed that the table top seems to me to be quite easy to remove altogether...so why not? Why not use the lower half as built, but replace the upper half (which is where the design problems all lay anyway!) with something customised to do the job that a better product should do out of the box to start with? It would not be that far removed from building a table saw from scratch as so many people have already done, except that you wont need to do quite so much work to get there.

Feasible? Or better to just pull out the saw and build a complete box for it without retaining anything original bar the saw itself?

I don't know BP if rebuilding will solve some of the problems. I'm lucky in that the BMF sets up square and solid every time.......even though its only fixed at one end. A hell of a lot of other machines use this system and it seems to work.
Have you given the feed-out table the flick??? as it stops any mitre slot run jig from moving past the blade.
The machine really needs a table saw set-up as detailed on this forum, but it gets better the more familiar I get with it, and in the next day or so I'll post a couple of sleds that solve cross-cutting.
I now have no problems ripping or re-sawing using Jig #1 and with a good combination blade I get excellent results.
Hang in there, and we'll see what happens.
Regards,
Noel
Sorry, I hadn't answered the friction question.
Every screw and the plastic insert catch wood passing them, so there is work to be done there. A zero clearance insert (although not shown with Jig#1) is essential, plus I've been using a quick wipe of a small amount of Ubeaut Traditional wax on the table (sorry Neil) and everything moves smoothly.
Also a good multi-toothed blade is essential (80 tooth on at the moment)....so there's another $100.
But still under $1000 machine.

hmmm...I only just realised that it doesn't actually have a feed-out table at all! I can see the bolt holes for it, but no table. The person I bought it from claimed it was a present that he'd only turned on to check it worked...but from the sawdust inside it, I'd say he didn't actually turn it off until he'd finished a project or two, lol. So the feed-out table problem isn't really a problem for me.

Thanks for the advice and the pictures thus far...I look forward to seeing the rest, when you have the time. Much appreciated!

No sweat!
I figure if you've got motor/arbour/table/slots........something can be done!

The saw dust inside it was probably from one cut into a piece of wood.....I've got most things sussed, but dust extraction is making me think.
Hang in there.
Regards,
Noel

ps I'm off to Noddy land now, thinking about the next post,,,and how to get the camera to do what I want it to!!!!

I bought a cheap Ryobi and the single biggest improvement was buying a decent blade(Irwin 80 teeth.), there are quite a few other things that need/needed doing , but starting with a good blade made the rest much easier.

I my case the biggest problems lay with lack of experience rather than the saw.