Question's for wide table owners

[Tom Miller]

My wide table is set up such that I have about a 55" rip capacity on the right. My sheet goods largely consist of 5x5 baltic birch, but I usually have those cut down at the supplier to two pieces at 2' and 3' width. Even so, I'll still utilize the max rip when I cut those pieces. So, breaking down full 4x8 sheets is not the only reason to install the wide table. But, if you have the room to handle the sheets, and the extra infeed and outfeed support, you certainly could.

Just because you have the wide table, though, is no reason to choose it over the CS, if the CS approach is good enough and much easier/safer.

Regards,
Tom

[pelligrini]

I'll use a sawboard to get the sheetgood down to a manageable size. I still use the table saw for the final cuts, unless the panel is too large. I'll do larger plywood pieces now since I built my outfeed table http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=41179 I still don't want to try to manage a 4x8 sheet on the saw. The rigid flip tops work pretty good, but the large table is much easier. I'll use one of the rigid stands for infeed support sometimes.

I don't have a CMS, so I do quite a bit of crosscutting on the tablesaw with the SMT. A long miter fence with a wide table extension made crosscutting the dozen or so 2x12s I used for my bench build fairly easy. Same when I do half laps in long stock with a dado stack.

[Black wallnut]

I'll echo what others have said about downsizing sheet goods with a circ saw however I do not own a good circ saw so have to use my BT3K. Just this past winter I enhanced my outfeed to IIRC 3' something I should have done when I built my saw station. If I had the room I'd like to have a stand alone router station but I've simply not enough room. Even then I'd still like to have a router station in my wide table. I wished I had more room to the left of the saw but the only way I can think of doing that is to add a thrid set of rails. There have been several times when I've had to use my built in sliding saw base to crosscut at over 6'. With my set up i can move the ext rails past the edge of the right side of my saw station.

The real key to being able to safely use a wide table saw to mazimun advantage is infeed and outfeed support. If you do not have both as well as an extended rip fence (infeed side) you'd be better served sizing plywood with a different method.

[dbhost]

Just FWIW, I have used the BT for reducing sheet goods, but I don't like to... I do have a cutting guide, and a good blade on my circ saw, but the BT is just that much more accurate...