Thread: The Saga Of The Saw

The Saga of the Saw

Before I get to the point I’ll just give an explanation for what you are about to read. There is an old saying that the better the tool, the better the job. Ok! Maybe there is no such saying but there should be……. Anyone who uses Triton tables, Router or saw, soon finds out that the quality of the finished job is not necessarily assured by the table brand. If you don’t have a correspondingly quality tool to attach to the table your work is never going to reach your expectations, and some people tend to blame the table rather than the tool. As I have a limited work area available to me I decided, when the time finally arrived, that I would buy a Triton compact saw table. Ok, off I went and picked one up at a Toolies trade night. That managed to save me a few dollars off the retail price. I then coupled the table to an old (very old) Black & Decker 7¼” saw. Now this was a very fine saw in its day and had given sterling service over the years but it came as no surprise when I was unable to tune the tune to cut straight so I bit the bullet and decided to buy a new saw. This was when I made the classic mistake. I went for a tool on price rather than quality/reputation. I bought a **** 7¼” saw and promptly married it to the table …… Do you think that I could tune the saw even then? No way Jose!!!! About this time I started to blame the table and was a very unhappy camper. I carried out all the troubleshooting instructions ( or so I thought) and couldn’t get the cut to be even remotely straight!

To cut a long story short I eventually took the entire contraption along to a Triton club meeting. I got our esteemed Prez to run his vastly experienced eye over the set-up & was greeted with a pontifical snort and a very large “harrumph!” when he first noticed the type of saw I was using…. After two hours of pushing, shoving, screwing, unscrewing and a brilliant display of what could only have been an oriental language ‘coz I’ve never heard some of those words before, even after all those years in the service, the great one finally raised his noble head and declared haughtily, “The @#%%$^ saw is your problem……” Gee there was some news. I was about to ask what could be done about it when I noticed TGO doing his impersonation of Pontius Pilate and washing his hands of the whole sorry mess before growling, “Get a decent saw that has a stiff frame & we’ll talk, in the meantime I’m going to cut some wood.” And off he strode. Now I took this as being a therapeutic way of ridding himself of tension so I immediately sliced a lump of pine that was laying around & was not surprised to see that the cut was all over the place like a mad woman’s breakfast…….. Into the boot of the car went the unit & back to my workshop……….(sigh)

Over the next couple of weeks every coin or note that wound up in my pocket went into my piggy bank (actually it’s sheep but that’s another story) Finally came the day when I had the right amount. On the phone for a half hour checking prices and then off like a bullet to Toolies. And there I stood, the proud owner of a bright new Triton Power saw… Well, as you will no doubt understand, I rushed home and unceremoniously tore out the **** and replaced with the BIG orange unit. “Ok”, I thought, “how long is going to take to tune?” Well as it happened it took about half an hour and then I put some pieces of scrap to the sword err.. saw and what do you know, the cuts were as close to perfect as I had any right to expect. My wife still doesn’t understand the relationship between a man and his new straight cutting saw. I think it was when she caught me fondling the unit with a huge grin on my face that doubt first crept in! She had noticed similar deviant behaviour when I bought home my Triton Router so you would think that she would be used to it by now……I kept the finger jointer and new biscuit joiner a little more low key. Extension frame next….Pucker up baby!!!!

Anyway, getting back to the reason I am writing this. Would any of the readers of fine publication like to buy a barely used **** Power Saw at a very sensible price? (not recommended for use in a saw table, otherwise a fine saw.)


Peter J Beckwith


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Catch ya later,
Peter B.
(Corunetes)