8iowa wrote:Tim:
I place the 5' connector tubes placed on the outward side of the table extension, and then use a floating table on the far end supported by the telescoping legs. With the crosscut table being 1/2" thick, I place a 1/2" plywood board on top of the far floating table over a sheet of waxed paper. Thus the far end slides very smoothly as I run the crosscut table forward. A ball bearing roller stand will also work, but I find that the table extension system is even smoother, enabling very accurate cuts on boards and sheet goods even wider than 14 inches. A professional cabinet shop will of course have a large cabinet saw set up permanently with large infeed and outfeed tables as cutting sheet goods is their daily activity.
While my set-up is not quite as efficient as the cabinet maker's, I do have the flexibility of the easy blade change on the Shopsmith. For plywood, I use a Freud 80 tooth ATB blade that gives super fine cuts. For soft and hardwoods I find that the 60 tooth Shopsmith crosscut blade is hard to beat. this is not to say that the owner of a cabinet saw cannot also change blades, but on most table saws this is a chore.
I have a small radial arm saw that gets very little use. I'm not comfortable with it's safety aspects, and dust collection is virtually non existant. I had a 10" Delta Compound miter saw (now gone) that of course could not crosscut the wider sheets and boards, and I didn't think the cuts were that great either. It also threw dust everywhere. The RAS and chop saws are great contractor's tools, but I don't like to use them in my shop.
Hi eight,
I like my Mark V. I will keep, and use it as long as I am able]MUST[/B] use it for every operation. I am glad that you are able to do this operation on your Mark V. Your method works well. Of course you do have that table set up to do. It is too bad that you feel uncomfortable using your RAS. I do knot have one...yet...but I have used them, and I wood have a permenant place for my RAS, with a long enough bench to accomodate the long boards. On the other hand, I wood consider one of the sliding models of cross-cutting saws too. My current chopsaw does knot slide or cut compounds and can knot crosscut more then about 6", but it is much faster to use then the Mark V. For a replacement compound/sliding saw, the 10" DeWalt DWE717 has a 14" cutting capacity and the 12" DW718 has a 16" cutting capacity. Again, I wood have a permenant bench set up for that too. Like you (and many others, I am sure), I like the fast blade change capability of the Mark V, but the rest of the set up wood be much faster on a RAS or a chopsaw, with a permenant bench. You wood have virtually zero set-up, except to place the wood in the proper place.
This converstaion is more proof of the ability to do a quality job, in a small space, with the Mark V, that you need more space for, to do it faster (and still with quality), with single purpose tools. If you have the space (and your new shop does), single purpose tools will help you to do a job faster, and just as well as "our" Mark V's. If you do knot have the space, it is a very good thing that we
CAN do the job with the Mark V.
Going back to the original question; I think that "The best add-on for the Mark V" was the Educational efforts that ShopSmith initiated. I hope those efforts return.