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Thanks to all of the great examples I saw on this forum, I decided that buying extension rails for my BT3000 would be silly when for less money I could find a used BT3000 to add to mine. Less money, and in addition to the rails I wanted, I had another complete saw, router table section, fence, sliding miter table, etc., and a far more useful saw overall.
I really love some of the beautiful bases that some people have made for their Frankensaws, but I wanted to get the saws functioning to use for a project, so didn't have the time to build a nice base. The beauty of the BT3000s for this purpose is that they have those great square bases. I figured out that with a few new holes drilled in the legs, I could simply bolt the two bases together to make a surprisingly solid base.
I used the connectors from t-nuts.com to connect the rails together, and they worked well. They are nicely aligned so I can slide the fence all the way down without even noticing the joint.
I had to do some shimming of one of the saws when mounting the saws to the bases, in order to get the tables aligned with each other just right. And I added a small wooded support on the far right end of the fence to help keep everything in alignment, since that end hangs over quite a way from the saw, and supports the router table.
It's not as pretty as many of the others, but it works great.
I put it on a mobile base that I happened to have the hardware for, so I can turn it sideways in my shop if I need to rip long material.
I filled in the open areas with tables made of 3/4 melamine.
I added an outfeed table made from an old hollow-core door that I was gonna throw out, based on the one by David Cox, but using the full door. Make sure you plan the way it hinges so that when it's folded down it's below the surface of the saw table. I cut an additional notch in the far end of the outfeed table because I was going to use my extra sliding table for the router table, but I decided instead to build a solid melamine table with a miter track. I'm supporting the outfeed table with an outfeed roller (that I don't have any other use for anymore because I have an outfeed table!) but may eventually add some legs that angle back to the table saw base.
I had to add a cutout to my fence extension so that I could fold the table without removing the fence:
I have a router table on one end, a fine crosscut blade by the sliding table, and a rip blade on the other saw. Another nice thing is that when I lower both blades and remove the fences, it makes a nice big assembly and work table.
I like how the saw has the plug and outlet on the side of the saw, so when I'm using the router table, I plug the router into that, and can use the saw's on/off switch, with it's easy reach-down-blindly-and-hit-the-cover-to-turn-off feature.
Buying the extra saw (for $75, I think, off of Craigslist) also gave me an extra fence, which I intend to modify into a dedicated router fence with dust collector port, and an extra miter gauge for the sliding table, which is handy for building specialized jigs. For instance right now I have my extra one set up with a tall crosscut panel for some notching that I had to do on the edge of panels -- and I didn't have to attach it to my normal mitre gauge.
Just thought I'd share some photos of this because all the photos of your frankensaws that y'all shared were really helpful to me. Thanks for all of your help to everyone who has posted about theirs.
And I thought it would be good to show people that you can throw together a decent Ryobi Frankensaw without having to build a nice base for it if you have the BT3000 bases. I put this together pretty quickly and was able to start using it on a project right away. I figured this would be a temporary solution and that I'd build a nice base later, but it works so well that I may just leave it.
I really love some of the beautiful bases that some people have made for their Frankensaws, but I wanted to get the saws functioning to use for a project, so didn't have the time to build a nice base. The beauty of the BT3000s for this purpose is that they have those great square bases. I figured out that with a few new holes drilled in the legs, I could simply bolt the two bases together to make a surprisingly solid base.
I used the connectors from t-nuts.com to connect the rails together, and they worked well. They are nicely aligned so I can slide the fence all the way down without even noticing the joint.
I had to do some shimming of one of the saws when mounting the saws to the bases, in order to get the tables aligned with each other just right. And I added a small wooded support on the far right end of the fence to help keep everything in alignment, since that end hangs over quite a way from the saw, and supports the router table.
It's not as pretty as many of the others, but it works great.
I put it on a mobile base that I happened to have the hardware for, so I can turn it sideways in my shop if I need to rip long material.
I filled in the open areas with tables made of 3/4 melamine.
I added an outfeed table made from an old hollow-core door that I was gonna throw out, based on the one by David Cox, but using the full door. Make sure you plan the way it hinges so that when it's folded down it's below the surface of the saw table. I cut an additional notch in the far end of the outfeed table because I was going to use my extra sliding table for the router table, but I decided instead to build a solid melamine table with a miter track. I'm supporting the outfeed table with an outfeed roller (that I don't have any other use for anymore because I have an outfeed table!) but may eventually add some legs that angle back to the table saw base.
I had to add a cutout to my fence extension so that I could fold the table without removing the fence:
I have a router table on one end, a fine crosscut blade by the sliding table, and a rip blade on the other saw. Another nice thing is that when I lower both blades and remove the fences, it makes a nice big assembly and work table.
I like how the saw has the plug and outlet on the side of the saw, so when I'm using the router table, I plug the router into that, and can use the saw's on/off switch, with it's easy reach-down-blindly-and-hit-the-cover-to-turn-off feature.
Buying the extra saw (for $75, I think, off of Craigslist) also gave me an extra fence, which I intend to modify into a dedicated router fence with dust collector port, and an extra miter gauge for the sliding table, which is handy for building specialized jigs. For instance right now I have my extra one set up with a tall crosscut panel for some notching that I had to do on the edge of panels -- and I didn't have to attach it to my normal mitre gauge.
Just thought I'd share some photos of this because all the photos of your frankensaws that y'all shared were really helpful to me. Thanks for all of your help to everyone who has posted about theirs.
And I thought it would be good to show people that you can throw together a decent Ryobi Frankensaw without having to build a nice base for it if you have the BT3000 bases. I put this together pretty quickly and was able to start using it on a project right away. I figured this would be a temporary solution and that I'd build a nice base later, but it works so well that I may just leave it.