My Table Saw Saga

So one day, my neighbor asked me to step into his garage to see something. He had seen me building my nieces' toy box, and he asked me if I wanted to have his circa 1957 Craftsman table saw.

 I said yes.

These classic "zip code saws" (so called because the model numbers often resembled postal ZIP codes) were really well made, and his (mine) was no exception. Surface rust would need to be cleaned up, sure. New blade. Probably need to clean rust off the trunnion. Whoops, it's wired for 220v; going to have to switch it back to 110. Oh, wait...the power cord is all chewed up; going to have to replace that, too -- and who knows what condition the motor is in. Aaaand, the surface rust is a bit worse than I thought...

OK, so now I had a 400-pound machine in my tiny garage shop that was useless unless I spent every minute of my precious shop time restoring it. Surely there's a vintage tool geek surfing Craigslist with the goal of buying a run-down, 50-odd year old table saw. Right?

It's not upside down anymore!

Enter Larry.

As Larry drove off with my now disassembled Craftsman stuffed into his Honda CRV, his $200 in my hand, little did I realize that a month later I'd find a fellow willing to sell me his Ridgid
saw for $150 because he was moving out of state the next day. Hey, that means I have money to put toward a new blade, too! Gotta love how things work out sometimes.

Of course, the next day, there was an ad on Craigslist for a fairly new, immaculately clean Ridgid TS3650 for $200, but who cares, right?