Doesn’t seem flat enough to me. I’ve always heard the tablesaw is the flattest surface in your shop. Is this okay?

  • AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world
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    3 years ago

    I hate to say it, but it’s probably an acceptable amount of flatness for a jobsite saw. I’m willing to bet their cast iron offerings have better tolerances. You do have the safety features, though.

  • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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    3 years ago

    Bro, you are busting out the straight edge and feeler gauges looking for sub mm precision on a portable saw?

    If you are working with wood don’t bother worrying that much. It’s incredibly forgiving and having a little bit of slop frequently makes assembly and finishing easier.

    If you need to cut things to the fraction of a mm or sub degree accuracy you should be using a mill.

    • Sagrotan@lemmy.world
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      3 years ago

      Depends on what you wanna do, hobby some 3x4s together or building a hardwood dresser. From experience, the quarter mm you are over on one end is a not fitting drawer on the other. Wood is forgiving, alright, but the real fun begins when it’s made precisely.

      • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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        3 years ago

        Very true. That being said my old man is a phenomenal carpenter/general contractor and as far as I’m aware all the cabinets and such he’s ever built were assembled on the concrete floor of his garage. No where near as flat as that table saw top.

        One of the things he tries to teach me was that keeping in mind and working with the limitations of your tools and materials is what makes the final piece come together as planned. The things I’ve seen him do with a jank jigsaw older than I am were impressive to say the least.

          • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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            3 years ago

            I can’t speak from extensive personal experience but having seen the stuff that he created I can say the flatness of his work area never seemed to bother him much or the final outcome. He made everything from huge custom kitchens to all hardwood boutique furniture and even fully functioning looms for Shaker Village. I used to have a ton of photos but they were lost with my old phone. This is the only one I’ve currently got. Obviously you can’t tell the quality immediately from a photo but you can at least get an idea.

  • captsneeze@lemmy.one
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    3 years ago

    When I purchased my first woodworking equipment, I was thinking much more like an engineer than a craftsman. I pretty quickly found that wood is a fairly forgiving material, and being off by a few thousandths on a table saw isn’t usually a big deal. But, it depends on what you’re building and what other tools you have.

    • Baggins [he/him]@lemmy.ca
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      3 years ago

      The diagonal table flatness spec for the Sawstop Jobsite Pro is 0.033 inches. (The CTS doesn’t have a specified flatness on the Sawstop site.) The gauges in your pictures are 0.015.

      So yes, that is normal. Yours is twice as flat as the specified tolerance for a model that is twice the price.