Assembling A Delta Contractor Saw

Details: This is the story of the assembly of a Delta Contractor's Saw, with mobile stand and 30" Unifence guide. Initially written in early 1996. The page was re-vamped in 2006.

Five Boxes: When I shelled out the 800+ dollars for the saw and 30" Unifence (the mobile stand was a 'gift' from Delta at the time) I didn't realize how many parts were in the five boxes I left Trendlines aka Woodworkers Warehouse (Nashua NH) with. Trendlines has closed up shop in Nashua, NH around 2004.

Unpacking These are a few pictures of what you end up with after unpacking the five boxes. First, all the instructions. I knew it was going to take a while!

Parts The mess is from house construction that was happening.

Here is a close up of the the nuts and bolts and the Unifence parts. It took 30 minutes just to unpack and get to the point where I felt I could start assembly.

Assembily Part 1 I didn't take any pictures of this phase. I spent one hour: Assembling the mobile base Assembling the stand Assembling the motor mount Convert the motor to 220V I then used the saw as bench while I continued construction on the house.

The Final product These were taken on 2/13/96. At which time I did actually run one 2x4 through the saw.

It took another 2 and 1/2 hours to: Align the belt and put the belt cover on Install (to align) and then remove the saw guard/splitter Assemble the left side extension At this point the manual was a bit fuzzy - I switched from the How to Assemble your contractors saw book to the How to install your 30" Unifence book. The manual should mention something about installing alternate fences at the point it starts describing its standard fence installation. Assemble the table for the extension fence and then attach it to the saw Install the fence guide rail Install the fence and align it Remove the 120v plug and install a 220V (15A) male cap on the cord

Success On February 18th 1996 I actually used the table saw for something real. If I had a dato-blade insert I would have switched to that but I only needed to take about 1/8 of an inch off of a window stool to get it to fit better on a casement window. The best part, i didn't even have to worry about the fence being out of alignment - I just set it, locked and and started it up.

Notes Don't plan on using the saw the same day you buy it - unless you are young and have done it before :-) The metal bar you have left goes on the back of the saw to help support the left extension table. I could not find this mentioned in the Contractors Saw manual but the Unifence manual did mention something about removing it.