A table saw is the heart of just about any wood shop, used for everything from breaking-down sheet goods to making fine cuts for tight joinery. But like any other tool, they have a limited lifetime. Regular maintenance can allow a table saw to last for decades, but they live a hard life, and eventually parts wear out.
Why the new table saw:
Previously I had (and still have) a used Grizzly G1022 table saw. It was built in 1984 (I was still in high school), and I’m at least the 3rd owner. It was in very rough shape when I bought it, looking like it has spent a non-trivial amount of time outside stored outdoors, but it ran and the price was right.
The G1022 is a contractor style saw, and consistent with the time it was built, has an open back and bottom and no dust collection. The motor hangs off a pin/hinge at the back of the saw, and the weight of the motor holds the drive belt tight against the arbor pulley.
Over the time that I’ve owned it, I added passable dust collection, a new drive belt, a new fence, re-wired the motor from 120 VAC to 240 VAC, paddle style start/stop switch, and spent a lot of time resurfacing and leveling the table and wings. After all that, generally it was a pretty good table saw, but there were still some annoying problems, and a recent deep dive in to the lift mechanism for the arbor revealed some serious issues that led me to shopping for a new table saw.
The two primary issues with the saw were that both the miter slots in the table top and the worm gear for the arbor lift mechanism were severely worn. The worn miter slots was an issue I had known about from day one, and Grizzly still sells the replacement cast iron top ($227), but in the contractor style table saw, virtually the entire internal structure of the saw is mounted to the underside of the table, so replacing it is a non-trivial task. Working around the inconsistent miter slots wasn’t a show stopper, so the cost and effort of replacing the top for that issue just didn’t seem worth it the cost and effort.
The much larger issue was the worm gear in the lift mechanism. The symptom manifested itself as a huge amount of backlash in the hand wheel of the saw blade lift (almost a full turn). I originally thought it was just a lose set-screw holding the hand wheel to the shaft, but a few weeks ago doing a deep dive inside the saw during some maintenance, I found that where the worm gear engages the teeth on the trunnion, both both the teeth in the bottom of the trunnion and the gear stself were severely worn (See photo below). The result was that setting the height of the saw blade accurately was almost impossible.
My first thought was to buy the replacement parts (cast iron top, worm gear and trunnion) and make a project of it. While it would be a ton of work, it would be far cheaper than buying a new saw, and it would have provided a serious upgrade in performance. Unfortunately, a search of the Grizzly web site found that while the top is still available, the rest of the internal parts are not. I then spent some time looking for a used G1022 to cannibalize for parts, but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t in far worse shape than the saw I already had. Ultimately I decided a new table saw would be in order.
grizzly 1022 table saw
Shopping for a new table saw:
I’ll spare everyone the boring details of all the comparison shopping I did for the new saw, other than say it involved a large spreadsheet comparing pricing, features, reviews, etc., etc., etc. The primary saws I compared where the Grizzly G1023RL – 10″ 3 HP 240V Cabinet Saw, Grizzly G0899 – 10″ Hybrid Saw, Harvey ALPHA HW110LC-36P 10” Cabinet, Laguna F2 Fusion Table saw (cabinet saw), Laguna F3 Fusion table saw (Cabinet saw), Grizzly G0941 10″ 3 HP 220V Cabinet Saw and the Sawstop PCS175-PFA30 Cabinet saw.
After comparing features, prices and a few intangible factors (like parts availability and customer service) ultimately I settled on the Grizzly G0941. At the time it was on sale which put it in the middle of my price range, and Grizzly ships directly to consumers. The G0941 was released in 2021 and is heavily based on the existing G0651/G0652 table saws.
g1022 (1984) vs. g0941 (2022)
| G1022 (1984) contractor styler | G0941 (2022) cabinet style | |
| Power/Voltage/current | 1 1/2 HP / 120/240 VAC / 16/8 amps | 3 HP / 240 VAC / 13 amps |
| Weight | 220 lbs | 474 lbs |
| Motor | TEFC fan cooled, 3450 RPM V-belt drive | TEFC fan cooled, 3450 RPM flat-belt drive Permanently lubricated bearings |
| Table size | Cast Iron Height: 37″ 40”W x 27 1/8” deep Cast iron w/ extension wings Max rip right of blade 24”, 11″ left of blade | Cast Iron Height: 35″ 45-1/4 in W. x 27 in deep Cast iron w/ cast iron extension wings Rip capacity: 36″ right right of blade, 18″ left of blade |
| Blade | 10″ Max dado width 13/16″ Max depth of cut at 90 degrees 3-1/8″ | 10″ Max dado width 3/4″ Max depth of cut at 90 degrees 3-3/16″ |
| Distance to front of blade | Distance from Front of Table to Center of Blade 17″ Distance from Front of Table to Front of Blade 12″ | Distance from front of table to center of blade: 14-7/8″ Distance Front of Table to Blade At Maximum height cut 10-5/16 in. |
| Fence system | Shopfox (after market) | Camlock T-Shape w/Aluminum Face |
| Dust collection | 4″ (home made) | 4” below blade |
| Cast iron table thickness | unknown | 1 1/2″ |
| Notes: | 40 years old Worn t-slots & worm gears. No available parts Pitted table top. | Blade Tilt DRO Blade lift via acme threads instead of worm gear. Parts and info available on website. |
| Price | — | Sale price: $2395.00 Shipping: $269.99 Lift gate delivery: $34.00 Tax: $222.72 Total: $2921.71 |
Why not a SawStop?
While I was doing the research comparing brands/models, more than a few people told me that I HAD to get a SawStop table saw. To those not familiar with the brand, in addition to making extremely high quality table saws, SawStop technology can detect if any part of you (hands, fingers, etc) comes in contact with the saw blade, and retracts the blade within 1ms. Effectively, while you might receive a small nick or scratch, you won’t lose any fingers or need a trip to the hospital if you make contact with your saw blade. Absolutely no doubt, the technology is impressive.
While there are a lot of reasons to own a saw you can’t cut off important body parts with, the decision to forgo a SawStop came down to two main factors:
1) the technology comes at a relatively steep price. In this case, the bottom line was configuring a SawStop as close as I could to the G0941 was going to add another $1k to the price, pushing the total cost (with shipping and tax), well over $4,000.00, and that was just way too far over my budget.
2) when discussing price and SawStop, almost every conversation devolves to something along the lines of “too expensive? Well, how much are your fingers and hands worth”? A lot, obviously, but the argument only makes sense if you’re in a position where money is no object, and that just isn’t the case for most people.
ordering and receiving
Grizzly products are ordered through their web site, and in this case, turn-around was extremely fast…4 days from order to curn-side delivery. The post-pandemic supply chain seems to be back to normal.
Unpacking, Assembly and first thoughts:
Delivery: The G0941 is shipped in three packages: the saw in a wooden crate (483 lbs.), the rails in a wooden crate (80 lbs), and the fence in a cardboard box (24 lbs). I don’t have a fork truck, so paying the extra $30 for lift-gate service is a necessity (and well worth it). The driver was nice enough to use his pallet jack and roll the pallet down the driveway drop everything in my garage, as technically they’re only obligated to get it off the back of the truck and down to ground level.
Unpacking: Stage 2
So once the exterior box was removed, as delivered, the saw is on a pallet sitting on a larger pallet. My original idea was that I would be able to just walk the saw off the pallet, but sitting over 10 inches off the ground, that wasn’t an option.
I also considered the brute force method of getting a few folks to manually lift the saw off the pallet, but at 475 lbs., even four people would be lifting over 100 lbs each, and carrying a heavy saw over a semi-broken pallet would be a less than safe option.
After a bit of consideration, the winning idea turned out to be building a ramp out of 2×6’s and walking/sliding the saw down the ramp. Construction screws anchored the ramp to both pallets so it wouldn’t move while the saw was sliding down, and I used a couple of stringers to tie the planks of the ramp together. At four feet long, the angle of the ramp was only 11 degrees, so there was no chance of it tipping over on the way down. Turns out getting the saw down the ramp was far easier than I though it was going to be…just some nudges in the right direction and it was on flat ground.
In the shop
After assembling the mobile base around the saw, rolling it in to the shop was easy enough, then the work began of unpacking all of the parts, cleaning off the thick coating of rust inhibitor, and final assembly.
Fine Tuning
Bolting the wings to the main table is a tedious process. Each wing is secured with four bolts, they’re heavy, and if you don’t get them perfectly even and flat to the center table, you’ll never have a straight cut.
While the wings are machined flat and reasonably square, when mounted, if they are not perfectly square with the center table, then you can have a significant deflection up or down at the outer edge of the wing. In the case of both the left and right wings, I needed to file a small burr off the bottom edge and then apply packing tape below the bolt holes to deflect the wings up slights and even with the top.
Protection
Both the center table and wings are cast iron…heavy and durable, but no match for moisture or water. There are lots of coatings you can use, but I prefer basic paste wax. The picture on the right shows the saw after applying the second heavy coat of wax before I buffed it out.
initial Thoughts:
So the saw has been powered-up and I’ve made a series of test cuts, and it’s definitely a big heavy monster. Am I happy with it? Definitely. So how about a few thoughts in no particular order:
- At 3 HP, the motor and drive train has some mass to it, so I was a bit surprised that it almost instantly comes up to full speed when it’s powered on…there’s a lot to like about power tools running on 240 VAC.
- The side access panel allows very easy access to worm gears and slide pins and internals for cleaning an lubrication.
- Digital angle gauge:
- While a front mounted digital angle gauge is a nice feature, it definitely wasn’t a selling point. I’ve been using a small portable angle gauge that magnetically attaches to the blade for years, and in testing out the saw, they both agreed, so it time I may give-up using portable gauge and rely on the built-in gauge.
- Accessories:
- Of course none of my shop-made jigs or sleds will work with the new saw, as the t-track slot spacing and fence all have different dimensions from the old saw, so I’ll need to build a new cross-cut sled, overhead dust collector, and off-feed table, etc., etc.
- Dust Collection:
- While I appreciate that this saw has built-in dust collection, if there’s anything that may need some improvement, it’s probably the dust collection. While the shroud fits relatively tightly around the saw blade under the table top (see photo below), a portion of the air flow from your dust collector is diverted to collect dust that settles in the bottom of the cabinet. I’ll have to use the saw for a while to decide if this is a good idea or not.
- Right Hand Drive: I’ve quickly become a fan of the right-hand drive on this saw. The G1022 has a left hand drive, so the arbor nut threads backwards (lefty-tighty, righty-loosey), but the G0941 has a right-hand drive, so right tightens and left loosens. Nice.
G0941 gallery
updates
- TBD
