Customer Reviews

Delta TS220LS Shopmaster 10-Inch Deluxe Bench Saw with Legs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are on a tight budget and need a bench-top table saw this saw is good choice. At half the price of the DeWalt and Bosch bench tops and $150 less than the Makita benchtop the Delta is a great value for what it can do. Its a basic saw that performs adequately. The fit and finish is only average.

The positives are that it is quite light compared to the DeWalt and Bosch, about as light as the Makita which makes it easy to transport from job to job. It has a very strong motor every bit as good as the DeWalt or Bosch but a bit noisier. It has not bogged down on me even when ripping wet pressure treated lumber.

Negatives are that it has a crappy fence although a lot of saws do. DeWalt wins hands down for the best fence. Miter slots are too small to use standard accessories except the miter gauge that comes with saw. Bevel adjustment is somewhat difficult to set and disengage. No insert for a Dado blade. Insert plate sits out of flush with table so that your work piece can get hung up.

Bottom line: Great for those on a budget that do not need high performance out of a bench top.

Update: After using this saw for 9 months now I have to give it only 2 stars at best. I am pretty tough on tools because they get transported to job sites and bounced around in the truck. This saw just has not held up well at all to jobsite use. It now has so much vibration that you will get very heavy blade marks when ripping even with a brand new good quality blade. Parts have fallen or broken off. Its got a strong motor but overall quality is lacking. It is now only useful for rough work. There are better choices out there for portable saws.

This is my first table saw. I have been using a circular saw and my Dad's radial arm saw for my projects throughout the years. We are remodeling our guest bathroom and couldn't see paying a minimum ...[undisclosed dollar amount] installation charge to have two filler strips cut for the vanity. I'm not good enough with my circular saw to try to make finish cuts. The obvious solution was to buy a new tool. I don't plan on doing a great deal of work, but do need a good saw from time to time. This saw was easy to assemble following the included instructions. Since my vanity is maple and the cuts would show, I purchased a thin kerf 80 tooth fine cut blade to use instead of the one supplied with the saw. The one supplied is a nice carbide tipped general purpose blade. Replacing the blade and adjusting it was very quick and simple using the instructions. I did have to measure and jiggle the rip fence to ensure it was parallel to the blade before cutting. It doesn't line up automatically & there are no markings to use for reference. This was the only down side. The cuts were smooth and the saw went through the hard maple without bogging down. The instructions recommend putting a padlock through the power switch for safety. I haven't been able to locate one with the narrow diameter shackle required. Perhaps this is a specialty item from Delta? I'll just keep it unplugged for now. Overall, I am very pleased with the saw. It performed just as I had hoped it would and saved me money in the process.

You already know it has a smallish table and non-standard miter slots. So let's call this half a table saw. I paid $179 for mine. That's half a table saw at a third the price of a "real" table saw. So I couldn't resist trying it out.

In brief, you can do everything with this little saw that you can with a contractor's saw, plus one thing more: You can heave it around your shop, or up the stairs, or into your station wagon. With careful setup and adjustment, everything locks down straight and true. The measuring tape on the rip fence rail is amazingly accurate.

I have one major complaint: Would it have killed Delta to make the miter gage slide a little longer?

I'm chronicling my experiences with this tool at http://benchsaw.blogspot.com

For a more complete review:
<ul>
<li>Why I bought it
<li>Setup
<li>First cuts and a miter gage improvement
</ul>

I'd recommend this saw to cheapskates like me with limited shop space and a tendency to make their own jigs and fixtures, since you can't use store-bought ones.

This review is an update reflecting a couple of months of regular use. I've deducted one star for the throat insert, as detailed below.

ASSEMBLY: Assembly took over an hour, due mainly to the time required to positively identify the many fasteners.

SETUP: Heel-to-toe blade alignment, miter gauge alignment, and fence alignment were acceptable out of the box. Blade tilt stops and indicator were off, and after adjustment they did not return dependably to the preset stops.

PROs and CONs: This saw cuts well and produces clean, accurate cuts. However, as has been my previous experiences with Delta Shopmaster tools, they are a decent value for the price, but attention to detail is lacking. My main complaint with this tool is the crappy insert that doesn't sit flush with the table, causing boards to sometimes hang up on the exposed lip when ripping with the fence. This not only decreases accuracy, but leads to frustration and potentially dangerous situations when ripping thin material and cross-cutting short workpieces. Another problem is the non-standard miter gauge slots which do not accept after-market accessories such as featherboards and tenon jigs.

I reviewed this saw when I first set it up a few years ago. Now here are a few remarks about my experiences with it.

First of all, this is not a contractor's saw or a cabinet saw. It is a benchtop table saw, and that's how I'm reviewing it. So I'm not taking off points for table size, cut capacity, short arbor, noisy universal motor, non-standard miter slots, and a non-cast-iron table, because these are all features of benchtop saws.

In fact, the table size is very good for this class of saw, and I find the aluminum table very flat, and once you spend some time attaching the steel extension wing correctly, it stays lined up very well.

Other adjustments also stay put, in my experience. The saw and fence have spent several thousand miles bouncing in the back of a truck without needing realignment. I have babied it somewhat in transit, but not obsessively.

Contrary to what you may read in the reviews, it is eminently possible to do very clean, accurate, precise work with this saw. I do not understand reviewers who say the rip fence is no good. Once it's properly adjusted, it locks down tight and straight, and the measuring tape is more accurate than the one on my father's Delta contractor's saw. It doesn't look like much, but the fence does a hell of a job. I can rip a consistent, paper-thin slice off a long board using just the stock blade.

As with any saw, half the battle is proper setup. You cannot take this saw out of the box and just go. The other half is getting beyond the saw's inherent limitations using homemade jigs, fixtures, and imagination. For example, you simply can't crosscut anything wider than about 9 inches using the little toy miter gage. So you slap together a crosscut sled. There's a million ways to get things done with a little saw like this. Books like "Table Saw Methods of Work" and "The Jigs and Fixtures Bible" are packed with ideas.

Even the saw's cheesy throat plate assembly, which is widely and rightly maligned for rendering aftermarket mods impossible, can be got around. The main problem is that you cannot install a zero-clearance throat insert for ripping very narrow or thin pieces. I came up with a solution by picking up a piece of tempered hardboard and setting it on the saw and staring at it for a few minutes. Practically everything people complain about with this saw can be solved similarly or with proper setup.

An exception, perhaps, is the guard/splitter assembly, which is such a massive pain to get just right that-- I'm ashamed to say-- it is currently sitting on a shelf nowhere near my saw. But this is also the fate of many guard/splitters, even on high-end saws.

The motor is a noisy 15-amp universal motor, and this weekend I was using it with the stock blade to rip 5/4 oak with no problem. Sure, the motor notices a little. So you slow down just a bit, and it's fine. Yes, the saw jumps a mite when you turn it on. So, duh, you hold the stock down! Problem solved.

In short, this saw has more limitations than a contractor's saw, but those have limitations, too, and with a little care and imagination, you can do pretty much anything with this tool that you can with a big saw. And it costs less than $200, and you can pick it up and carry it.

Pluses for 15-amp motor, sturdy legs, big flat table, outfeed support, nice ATB carbide blade, highly functional if ugly rip fence, and accurate tape.

Minuses for cheesy throat plate, sub-average miter gage, plastic housing, and plastic feet that fall off the stand and get lost all the time.

A higher-end benchtop saw like a DeWalt, Bosch, or Makita, might rate 5 stars for higher quality components, but keep in mind that they tend to cost twice as much or more, and they have almost exactly the same limitations to work around.

Don't necessarily let this "low" rating dissuade you from buying this saw new. This review is for the refurbished model.

I bought this saw as a replacement for a big Sears model that I used to own. It was taking up to much room in my garage and was very heavy and difficult to move around. I am a weekend wood butcher and knuckle buster. I wanted a smaller lighter model and don't need the heavy duty features of a big iron model.

My saw arrived UPS with the carton tattered and horrors, the bottom was unsealed quite a bit. Opening it I found the contents were strewn about with some of the small nuts and washers loose. There was absolutely no padding or packing to protect or restrain the contents. Some parts were scratched and others were laying against the carbide saw blade. No saw blade teeth appeared to broken though, and it looked like the major parts were there and still intact. Amazingly the saw table was not scratched or dented even though there was only the thin cardboard box to protect it.

After completely assembling the saw and stand I started to make any necessary adjustments. The saw blade was WAY out of alignment. The instructions said that alignment shouldn't be necessary as it was factory set. It also said that if adjustment was necessary to loosen some screws accessible from the top of the saw table. These were very difficult to loosen and appeared to have been tightened way to much. I had to use a wrench on the underside. After getting them loose I still couldn't adjust the saw blade parallel to the miter-gauge slot. I'm talking about a quarter inch here, not a millimeter. I tried to take the blade off and found the adjustment so bad that the provided wrench wouldn't fit between the saw top and saw arbor notch.

My choices were to either send the saw back or completely take it apart. I choose the later. I removed the leg set, and took the top of the saw off it's plastic base to expose the guts. This also meant taking off the front tilt and elevation handles and the wiring. I was down to just the top, motor, and motor mount.

By loosing the "Floating Jack Shaft" mounting nuts the motor and assembly could be swung back into alignment. I did careful measuring before retightening the bolts to have minimal realignment upon reassembling this saw.

I also found that the miter gauge had lost its pointer during shipping so I made a new one out of scrap aluminum. Other lost parts consisted of a few lock-washers and a screw. More annoying to me was ending up with washers, screws, and an interesting machined part that I cannot find in the assembly instructions or parts list. One final anomaly was that the supplied screws that are used to hold the front rail to the saw were too large to fit into the holes drilled in the rail. I could have searched for smaller headed screws but decided to ream the holes with a drill bit "chucked" in a vise grip. Well, this is a refurb so I wasn't too surprised at all of this.

So why didn't I rate this one eyed, three legged dog even lower?

Because I feel it will fit the need for which I bought it. This is a bench saw made of an aluminum top with a plastic base so although it is not as stout as the big iron it doesn't need to be. I will NEVER use it as a work-top as I sometimes did with my old saw. The trade-off is that it is much easier to move around. It has plenty of power for the kinds of jobs I have planed for it. It cuts 1 inch softwood and 3/4 plywood like butter, although it starts rather abruptly getting up to speed almost instantly. More surprising is that it is very accurate. It actually has less run-out than my old cast-iron saw had and the rip fence locks tight and true. Once running it is actually quieter than my old saw too. Much of this has to do with the blade one uses.

It being small is an asset for me in another way; I feel safer using it. I can wrap my fingers over the rip fence easily to keep them out of harms way. Wood glides effortlessly over the machined saw table, which is dead flat. The table insert is a bit cheesy, being made of thin stamped steel. Making a zero clearance one may be a challenge because of the thinness. Since it can only rip to 20 inches I can not cut down the center of 4 foot sheet goods. But I could never do this accurately with the big saw either. Its' fence was too short for that kind of work. Especially for one person to handle without extra tables set up. I sometimes would try but the saw line always wandered. I would have been better off using a clamped straight edge and portable circular saw. Or even a router that could make the final shape and cut to size in one pass.

I feel if you buy this saw and don't expect big iron performance then you will be pleasantly surprised with its' power and accuracy. Having on hand a couple each of 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 mm combination wrenches will get it together and get you out of trouble too. You will need a flat head screw driver and a number 2 & 3 phillips-head screw drivers. A combination square should be used to check for squareness and blade alignment. I also used never-seize on all bolts that screwed into the aluminum table.

All-in-all I would have rated this saw a 4 if I hadn't had to fuss with it so much. Buy new and you can hopefully save yourself this.

A starter saw that helped put the finishing touch on a beautiful cabinet installation convinced me to come out of woodworking retirement and attack a complete kitchen remodel. Yes it's inexpensive and could use a bigger table, but for a portable saw to cut cabinet trim pieces and other small projects, it is great. Sure I'll be spending [$$$] for a Jet next year but this was worth the minimal bucks today.

I bought this saw as a starter to see what I wanted out of a table saw. I discovered after purchasing it that the arbor is too short to hold a traditional dado set. Instead Delta has a wobble dado blade that can fit on the arbor of this model. Needless to say, this is pretty much useless for doing any smooth cuts. The fence is also shoddy, although I expected this from a starter model. If you have a compound miter saw and a circular saw, you can do anything this table saw can do and more. Don't waste your money on this one - spend more and get something better. I plan to return mine to the retailer.