Customer Reviews

Bosch 4100-09 10-Inch Worksite Table Saw with Gravity-Rise Stand

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had a lot of frustrating little problems when I first got the saw but now that it's worked out it well worth it.

This is actually my second 4100. The first one was damaged when the box came open during shipment and the table top was scratched up by parts of the cart legs. It didn't help that the way it was packed the only thing separating the table top and the cart legs was a thin pieice of styrofoam with a cut out in the middle.

Anyway I received the second saw undamaged. There were some fit and finish issues. The table top had what looked like black fingerprint marks. I tried getting it off but couldn't...oh well...no big deal it's cosmetic. The second problem was not so trivial. The riving knife assembly was loose and not square to the table or lined up to the blade. There were no instructions in the manual on how to align it. I emailed Bosch customer service but it took them awhile to respond (5 days). In the interim, I figured it out myself. There's two allen bolts that adjust the riving knife from side to side and a screw with a locknut that adjust the angle. After that the saw ran fine and the new guard system worked as advertised...modular and very easy to use.

The saw was running fine for about a week when I ran into my third problem. As expected the blade supplied with the saw dulled out pretty quickly. I replaced with the Freud LU83R010 10-Inch 50-Tooth Thin Kerf Combination Blade that I bought just for the occasion. I tried a few crosscuts and the new blade cut like butter. I decided to rip a 24 inch piece of 3/4" plywood. To my horror the wood binded between the riving knife and the fence as it went past the back of the blade. I checked the alignment and tried again...same thing the wood binds as it goes pas the back of the blade. Tried my Irwin Marathon 80T blade and same thing. It turned out that the Freud LU83R010 and the Irwin 80T has a 0.092" kerf while the riving knife is 0.091" wide. Talked to Bosch customer service and they confirmed that is a problem. Their suggestion was to try a blade with the wider kerf. I tried the Bosch PRO1050COMB with a 0.128" kerf and a Bosch CB1040 with a 0.098" kerf and they work fine. So beware when using thin kerf blade with this new riving knife/guard system.

I am a finish carpenter and had been going back and forth between the Ridgid Table Saw and Bosch. Although I've used the Ridgid before, after researching the Bosch for couple of months, I decided to buy it. This saw is more expensive than the Ridgid but I must say it is worth the extra bucks. Very sturdy and accurate (once you do your initial setup). The gravity rise stand is ingenious and although I do not mind the 2 step folding saws, this saw always puts a smile on my face as I use the rise stand. Its so simple even a kid could work it.
The saw is higher than your standard table saws by about 3 inches. It does not sound much but it did feel awkward at first after using standard saws for such a long time. You do get use to it quickly though.
The rip fence is dead on and the soft start feature is a nice addition that prevents overload.
The saw is heavy but is easily loaded to the bed of your truck/van by placing the handles on the bed and sliding it back.
One of the worst features of this saw is the wheels. They are not large enough to carry over stairs. You will, I repeat you will scrape the metal bars behind the wheels frequently. Do not try to roll this saw over finished stairs. I am surprised that the engineers at Bosch did not recognize this.
Overall though, this saw is the best portable saw that I have used in years.

I have been using this saw for several months and am quite happy with it. I bought it mostly because of the safety features: riving knife, blade guard, and anti-kickback pawls. Early reviews said that these devices are so easy to use that owners actually will use them, and that has been my experience.

The saw is well designed in other respects, too. The fence and miter gauge are easily adjusted and accurate. The blade height adjustment wheel is convenient. The only thing I don't like is the clumsy blade bevel adjustment: to change the blade angle, you unlock a rather stiff lever and the blade and motor assembly flops around--you just push it to where you want it and tighten the clamping lever. I would have preferred a wheel like the height adjustment.

The gravity-rise stand is neat. I don't transport the saw to job sites (I'm a hobbyist woodworker), but I have to work in my garage, and need to store my tools against the wall. The saw is easy to fold up and stores in very little space.

The saw arrived in good shape, although when the UPS driver took it out of the truck, the manual fell out. It's easy to see how some people get a saw with no manual. If this happens to you, I suggest you download the manual from Bosch's web site. I did this before the saw arrived in order to learn about it as soon as possible. Yes, it's 84 pages long, but after page 20 or so, odd-numbered pages are in French and Spanish--if you don't need either of those languages, you can just print out the even-numbered pages.

I recently acquired a thin-kerf Forrest Woodworker II blade. I was a little nervous about it because of the reviewer who had trouble using a thin-kerf blade because the kerf is too narrow for the wood to clear the riving knife. The kerf of the Forrest blade is variously reported as 3/32", which is .094", and .100", and the riving knife is .091" thick. I had no trouble with the wood binding on the riving knife, in both crosscut and ripping operations. (The blade cuts beautifully, too--recommended.)

All things considered, this is a good portable saw for the price. I'd have gone with a larger saw if I had room for one, but I have to be able to tuck my tools off to the side in order to put my vehicles in the garage.

Rather than go into detail about what it does well, I'll just list my complaints:

- The included blade is of mediocre quality (though that's to be expected from stock blades these days)
- The texture of the table top looks like bead blasted metal, but from what I can tell it's some sort of spray coating. It's rubbing off in some areas to reveal a smoother surface underneath. Honestly, I'm not sure why they didn't just leave it that way.
- The included miter gauge fits sloppily in the slot. I had to purchase an aftermarket unit with adjustable width in order to make decent crosscuts.
- There is no way to lock the blade height, so it may change gradually because of vibrations or accidental nudging as you work. This can be a problem if you are doing partial cuts (such as dadoes for box joints) and need a constant depth.
- A considerable amount of dust goes to the floor under and behind the saw, even when hooked to a shop vac.
- The blade tilt adjustment is awkward. It has positive stops at 45 and 90 degrees, but anything else is best done with a good angle gauge and a helper to hold it in place while you use both hands to set the blade angle.
- The storage for the included push stick is on the back of the saw, instead of one of the sides where it would be easily in reach.

Got this setup after a long debate between brands, and I'm very pleased with its operation, though a few things aren't as good as they could be. I gave it 5 stars because it's the best one on the market right now, and competitors saws aren't nearly as well thought out as this one is, and are flimsier.

Good points:
- Packaging is very good. Lots of thick styrofoam, everything is secure and wrapped in plastic. The box is heavy walled, and shipping straps make an easy grab point.
- Everything on my saw was dead on from the factory, no adjustments were needed.
- The magnifying glass on the fence makes subtle adjustments easy, though it has to be cleaned off every time the saw is run.
- The equipped blade produces decent results in plywood and pine. Harder woods will cut, though not as smoothly.
- The deck is sturdy cast aluminum, strong and lightweight. It greatly reduces the weight of the saw.
- The motor's performance is unbeatable. It doesn't struggle.
- The stand is easy to use, easy to assemble and operates smoothly.
- The extendable side rail works wonderfully and is really helpful.
- On board wrench and blade storage is handy, keeps everything handy and tidy.
- It's nice that it's a saw and stand combo, it looks a lot better to my wife when she only sees one box instead of two (regardless of the cost of the items inside)
- The operating volume isn't deafening, but hearing protection is never a bad idea.

Bad points:
- If the blade is lowered all the way down inside the machine, the anti-kickback pawls get stuck in the plastic shield, and have to be carefully pried out so the guard isn't broken. The blade can be lowered below the deck for safety and storage without this occurring, it's only when the blade is lowered all the way.
- To padlock the unit, you'll need one with a really long shackle, and it can't be over 1/4" in diameter. Something that allows for a regular sized padlock would have been nicer.
- Lots of plastic below the deck. There's been no issues with it yet, though for the price I would have expected more metal.
- The fence storage doesn't really hold too well.
- This produces lots of dust, even with a shop-vac hooked to the exhaust port.
- A pusher should have been included, given the inherent danger of this type of tool. The miter gauge can work for this, but it's limited in use.
- The pneumatic tires are just another thing to forget about. I have a hard enough time remembering to check the tires on my car - now I've got something else? It also seems a bit silly to have them on a tool which will be used at jobsites where there will be nails, screws, etc. Solid rubber or foam filled tires probably would have been more ideal.
- According to the stand's instructions, you need 16 mm and 10 mm wrenches. Yes, the 10 mm are needed for mounting the saw, however the other hardware actually requires 17 mm and 13 mm wrenches.
- The instruction manual is detailed, though poorly formatted. It jumps around between english, french and spanish from page to page.

Just received this saw last week and used on one project this weekend. Great improvements over last year's model 4000-09, especially the new european-style guard (didn't install the kickback pawls but rest is great). Just changed from a Delta Contractors saw and very impressed with the fit/build of this portable saw -- was worried going to a portable saw would be a big step down but not with this one.

Manual was missing -- probably lost when it was opened at customs (UPS misrouted it through Canada). Phoned up Bosch and they are mailing me a new copy as this saw is so new they don't even have PDF electronic copies of the manual available yet.

Update: Bosch customer service mailed me a copy of the manuals and also emailed PDF copies of the saw and stand.

At 58 I'm done trying to save a few bucks with low end tools. I was about to buy a Craftsman to install our third laminate floor. But a common theme across all table saws was the hours spent in setting it up. I read NO such thing about this one. First thing I noticed is the well engineered zero gravity stand. This alone is genius. The soft start motor gets you 4 hp on a 120vac line.

I ripped laminate flooring as thin as a matchbook cover the entire length of a given board, amazing. I am not a carpenter by any means but this tool will serve the Home owner for decades. The built in vacuum hose attachment is great and the safety features a also great. My old table saw was a 7" Craftsman, belt driven over 50 years old and shook like an earthquake.

Invest in fine tools and your projects have a head start for success and the rest is up to you. Did not spend hours setting up anything. I used a machinist ruler and a square and the blade was so close it could not be measured and it is good enough for me.

Buy for name brand or invest for known quality the choice is yours and mine was very clear after using this one.

Hope it helps out you folks looking for a quality product and minimal hype. My second Bosch product and the quality shows even to the layout and storage of its tools.

I got this saw two days ago from the big orange store. After careful assembly, I was upset to realize that the tip of the riving knife was coming into contact with the saw blade. After calling Bosch and verifying that the riving knife was installed according to manual (locked in place and perpendicular to the blade), they could not help me. My options were to take it over 100 miles away to a Bosch service center, return it, or try to adjust it myself. It took almost 2 hours to unpack it and assemble it (most time was spent on the stand), so I didn't want to pack it back up and return it. I found that the arm that holds the knife housing was tilted, so I placed two washers (which had to be cut in half with a Dremel) under the knife housing assembly to shim it up. It works fine now, and I've gotten some good use out of it. But, I was pretty disappointed at having to go through all that after spending as much money as I did on the saw.

If anyone has this problem, please respond to this post and let me know how you solved your issue. Thanks.

This is a decent saw for the money and type of saw it is. If you want dead on accuracy you may want to consider a more expensive cabinet saw.

Using my digi align I was able to get the blade parallel to the miter slot to no more than .005 across the face of the blade.I achieved this with no adjustment out of the box with a frued finish blade.

However getting this same accuracy from the fence was almost impossible. Using all the adjustments, tricks and tips I could find the best I could do is get the fence parallel to the miter slot at only one spot on the fence. I set it so at the lead edge of the blade my digi align would read 000 however going to the rear of the fence the reading would rise to .025 and going to the front of the fence would get -.010.

A little disappointing but again this is a contractor's saw not a $2500 Delta or powermatic.

I have also purchased the rear extender and the left side extention, both fit very nice installed in less than 5 minutes but also both had to be tweaked to get them near level with the table.

The blade that comes with the saw? Throw it away and get a Freud or a Forrest.

Overall for the nearly $600.00 I spent on this saw I am very happy with it and would recommend it.

One last thing. Since I was able to get the blade almost dead on to the miter slot I decided to purchase an incra 1000HD for some accurate miter's and crosscuts. I really love that incra miter guage. The only problem was it seems the miter slot is slightly oversized. Even with the incra expansion rings that take the slop out of the slot I still had to tweak and do things that I should not have to do to get it right. It seems like most things on this saw are close but not perfect.

Feb 27 2011

I am sad to report that after giving this product 4 stars, I must modify this to only 1 star and warn all potential buyers to seriously reconsider the purchase of this saw.

I bought this saw at Lowes just under 2 years ago for 600.00 dollars, and the saw has actually been run(time the motOr was actually turning the blade) for I would guess to no more than 5 hours. I went to cut some oak yesterday and when I turned on the saw it made a load hum and the blade was actually slowly turning backwards!! Power is good nothing jamming the blade. Found multiple reports of this on the web for the exact same issue. The field(windings) have inadiquate laquer applied to them ultimitly causing the motor to short out!!!

I really am in disbelief. I thought Bosch made a quality product!! I guess not. I will repair and sell this saw.

Parts to repair will be around 100 dollars and guessing 3 hours of my time to completly rip this saw down to repair its inferior motor. If I had not found many reports of this on the web I would have said just my dumb luck, but obviously Bosch is currently making inferior cost cutting maximum profit margins to heck with the customer products..!!!!!

Buyer BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I debated long and hard over this saw or a more fixed saw. I don't have a large indoor space to work in so I would have to mount casters on a more fixed saw like a Delta or get a saw like this. I finally decided I didn't want to be rolling a 300 pound saw around in a hurry to get it out of the rain so went with the Bosch. It took a while to put together, but was very straight forward and went together without a hitch. This thing is awesome. I can pull it out of my shed set it up make a cut and put it away in less than 5 min. It rolls easily over rough terrain, the fence is true and it cuts like mad. Great saw. I use it for joinery, furnture and general carpentry. It might not work for a production furniture maker but if you only make one or two pieces a year it is fine and for a contractor that needs to take their saw with them there is no better choice.