John,

I am the original armchair woodworker who has just recently got off his butt and started putting together a garage workshop. I built your workbench (nothing like as good as yours and a good bit heavier – with 3/4″ pipeclamps – a mistake in my opinion now – and undressed 6 x 2″ lumber from the local DIY superstore! Withal I like it and it works really well.  Incidentally I used pipe flanges on the ends of the vertical pipes the bench-beam travels on and I think that it added significantly to the bench’s rigidity.

I recently completed an outdoor stair with open treads routed into the stringers etc and your bench was really up to holding all the large chunks of wood with surety and finesse – and I am looking at building a suite of office furniture – including modular desktop units – all because I really can handle the tasks that involves on your excellently design workbench – thank you.

To my problem . . .

A few months ago I acquired a nearly new HITACHI C10RA3 10″ contractors saw with extending side table in partial payment for building a screen-porch for a friend.  It has a direct drive motor on a short arbor fixed to the underside of the table which means the space between the left side of the opening and the blade is only around 3/8″ and the factory made insert is a piece if thin metal painted red – to warn you it aint worth much I suppose – that doesn’t even appear on the left side of the blade! The factory made insert fixes, and is leveled, with 2 screws and doesn’t work at all well. The insert plate lies on aluminum lugs that intrude into the insert space and are very close to the table top. 

I am tempted to grind them off but that seems ‘radical’ and doesn’t address how to fill in the area on the left of the blade.  Incidentally there is almost no room to secure the left side of an insert plate on the left/underside of the table in that area because of a rod that runs through there.    

John I have seen and read how others make inserts for real tablesaws but that doesn’t seem feasible for this contractors quality saw – I just cannot figure out how to ‘git r dun’.

Currently I am thinking of buying a 1/16″ sheet of aluminum and laying it over the whole tabletop. That will probably work as I did do this with 1/4″ hardboard but it rather strains the fence and didn’t last very long.   Am I losing it, or am I genius, or do you know sumfin (sorry that is Texas trash talk for ‘something’) I need to know!!!

Thank you again

Jock Cameron