The Wife and I were in New Hampshire to see some NCAA hockey in March when our youngest kid, who’s actually 23, so NOT a kid – texted a video from the table saw, making a horrible noise.
The saw making a terrible noise is not unexpected. After all, it’s a Dewalt 745, the portable, 10-inch jobsite kind, which is not meant to last forever. And, since we’ve spent the last four year putting it through it’s paces, it was due for something to go wrong. But, because The Wife and I were out of town, with a vacation already scheduled for the next month, on top of me having no wood-based projects on the horizon, it was a back-burnered issue.
Plus, the Kid has a table saw of his own, so if something came up, we could muddle through. Even if it’s a Kobalt job site saw, and kind of sucks.
And it was the fact that his table saw kinda sucks that got me around to fixing this one – I used his saw making the drawers from my last post and, in short, not a fan..
Anybody hearing the video above, and checking in on the video I took below, will instantly be able to clock the issue: bearings! Only problem? The tablesaw has four bearings. I surely could have narrowed it down by pulling the same apart and having a look, but since there was a good chance more than one of the bearings was a problem, I just went and ordered a complete set for the saw. If any were unneeded, I’d at least have them on hand when they were needed.
Turns out it was only one needing replacement, that being the one farthest along what the schematic calls ‘The Armature’. When the machine was opened the BB’s in the bearing were about half missing, and the rest of them, and the outer ring for them, basically fell off when the armature was pulled free.
Of course, while most of the bearing fell off, getting the inner ring off the armature was not so simple. It did not just slide off. No, I had to buy a small bearing puller from Amazon, which mercifully came the next day – gotta love a $13 Chinese made tool to solve your problem, and Jeff Bezos making sure I got it next day.
Anyway, the new tool popped the old bearing right off, a soft mallet drove the new bearing on, and just like that – fixed.
You can enjoy the progression of this fix below, but before you do, check out my new Youtube channel. Can’t promise I’ll post with any regularity, but when I do, you’ll see it here.
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Joe Made A Thing 