Following on from my last post, I had a couple of more things to tweak on my table saw.

Dust Extractor Port Bracket

I wasn’t happy that the new extractor port I had recently fitted to my Kity 419 just sort of floated around where it exited under the saw

I thought it should have more support, so I made a bracket from 12 mm ply

I cut the hole using the bandsaw and filled the entrance kerf (where I fed the blade from the outside to the circle) with a slither of hardwood. That was just as quick as the alternative which would have been to use a jigsaw. I tidied up the hole using the spindle sander. In the following photo you can just see the point at which the bandsaw blade entered the circle (at top)

I attached a strip of hardwood, angled to match the rake of the leg-stand, so that the bracket would be perpendicular to the floor. I drilled the holes at the same angle so that the mounting nut would sit square to the inside of the leg-stand so as not to introduce any odd forces.

I drilled mounting holes in the leg-stand.

.. and bolted it on

Wheels

Although I don’t often move the table saw, it’s always handy to be able to shift it around easily when required. You can buy special wheeled bases to fit under machines but on a device of this size it’s easier and cheaper to just fit some wheels that are not in permanent contact with the floor but touch the floor when you lift the other side of the machine up far enough, at which point the 2 wheels will take all the weight of the saw and make it a doddle manoeuvring it around the workshop.

It was sensible to mount the wheels on the side of the saw that would be under the extension table, so I would never trip over them. I decided to fix them to a bracket that would be orientated vertically, similar to the Extractor Port Bracket I’d just fitted. Some angled wedges were required to match the angle of the leg-stand.

I marked around the wheel housing and drilled holes to match.

Once all the holes had been drilled, and the angled wedges attached to the back, it was time to paint it. I decided to cut another section away at the top to make it look better.

Then it was time to fit it all together

The top bolts go through at an angle and have an angled recess, exactly the same as the ones for the extractor hose bracket earlier.

Afterwards, I spent quite a while re-fitting the table extension and the sliding mitre carriage, the latter taking hours to adjust correctly.

I can report that all the mods I’ve done have been successful and well worth the effort. The dust extraction is improved immensely with hardly any dust escaping in normal use. Only when I ripped a length of 2 inch mahogany did I notice some sawdust on the table afterwards. There are still two more things I could do to improve dust extraction further. The first is that I could attach a shop vac or something to the dust extraction port on the blade guard and the second would involve creating a ‘zero-clearance insert’ around the blade, to effectively block off the gap that exists where the blade emerges through the table.

  • Dust extraction much improved
  • Easy to move around thanks to wheels
  • Kill switch is brilliant – so convenient
  • Rise-and-fall-and-tilt mechanism is now a pleasure to use after cleaning and lubrication

Tools used

  • Bandsaw
  • 6″ Belt sander
  • 9″ Disc sander
  • Random orbit sander
  • Spindle sander
  • Drill press
  • 20 mm Forstner bit (drill press, for bolt recess)
  • 8 mm drill bit
  • Cordless drill
  • Record No. 4½ plane
  • 13 mm ratchet ring spanners
  • 120 grit belt (belt sander)
  • Various clamps
  • Permanent marker
  • Measuring tape

Materials used

  • 18 mm & 12 mm plywood
  • Mahogany bits
  • 12 off M8 x 40 mm set screws, nuts, washers
  • Gorilla wood glue
  • Paint

Notes

  • If I were to do all these mods again I would probably elect to have the dust extractor outlet exiting between the wheels – that way the single bracket would serve both purposes and also it would be more out of the way, under the table extension.
  • Even though the extraction outlet is much more secure in the new bracket, the bracket flexes quite a bit as I force the hose on and off, so I may secure it at the bottom as well. That’s another reason why it would have been better had it been incorporated into the wheel bracket as mentioned above.