Hello to everyone!!!

[Stytooner]

Next time, buy her a beige colored car. It doesn't show dust as bad.

Welcome aboard to all of you.
I look forward to hearing more about your projects and tools.

[dbhost]

Welcome!

Yeah, I had the option of buying any of any number of different table saws, but I liked the BT3xxx best... There are things they could have improved, but the same can be said for just about any saw... Overall fantastic machines... Too bad they stopped building them under the Ryobi name...

[atgcpaul]

Welcome to BT3Central!

[lrr]

I have been lurking on this site for quite a while, I don't know why i never registered before. I have had my bt3100 since 2002, it is still in very good condition. Before this year, I use to do my woodworking in a double car garage, sharing the space with my wife's car. My wife is pretty particular about keeping her car dust free, so she was always cringing and grumbling whenever my saw was purring. Last year my oldest son left home (joined the army to be a mechanic) and my wife wanted to downsize the house; I agreed to her request with the condition that I would get a place to set up my woodworking shop. In march of this year, we moved in a bungalow with a triple garare. The first 3 month after the move were spent doing some painting, and making the house our home. I finally started working on my shop; I closed off a bay (it has a single garage door), and I'm currently in the process of building cabinet/workbench. My BT3100 is working hard these days. I'll post pics has my shop takes shape.

Well, you could probably have argued for getting 2 bays, but those "agreements" are seldom good ideas, and certainly never really feel like a "win" in the long run.

I have a basement shop about equivalent to a single bay garage. I found I was always moving things around, and decided I needed to get rid of a number of storage items on the floor, and get things onto shelves or into wall-hung cabinets. I am not done yet, but I managed to clear enough space to consider replacing my BT3100 with a SawStop cabinet saw. I have cancelled those plans after seeing what people are doing with the Festool track saw. My issue with the BT3100 was breaking down sheet goods for making custom cabinets, and the track saw will be a better tool for this than a bigger, more powerful table saw. For anything of "average" size, the BT3100 is really a great saw.

I have just overhauled my BT3100 with a thorough cleaning, lubrication, and addition of a new Forrest Woodworker II blade. And it now has a 36"x84" outfeed table, too. I built a workbench to use as a huge, homemade MFT-style MDF-topped workstation for the track saw. It has a 3/4" MDF top like the Festool MFT/3, but much larger. I machined it on a ShopBot CNC router, with 20mm holes like the MFT/3, so it will take commercially available bench dogs and accessories.

Workbench pictured with Festool 75" guide rail, and a couple Qwas Dogs (bright green, at near edge of workbench). I just finished this last night. Next step is to add apron around the top, and incorporate a large vise (maybe twin screw).