This week I have a discussion on whether granite is a technological breakthrough for stationary power tools or just a hopeless gimmick. Also, I throw in a fun little story about my own personal computer gremlins.
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I saw the Ridgid grannet saw at HD over the weekend. It looked nice but not for me. I don’t want stone on my tools. I would rather have the cast iron so I can use the magnetic featherboards I have.
As usual when I listen to your show I seem to come out of it both agreeing and disagreeing with you.
The use of granite, and this is coming from someone who loves their Steel City tools, on midi-lathe is silly. No argument there at all. If I’m going to be concerned about vibration on a lathe, which even on my crappy cheap-o ShopFox mini is minimal, then I’ll buy a full sized lathe and weight the sucker down with sandbags.
There is one application, however, where I find their use of granite an advantage – as a jointer fence. I haven’t yet seen a fence on a jointer that wasn’t at least a little bit out of flat.
As for the table saw top, yeah… I bought one. I was in the market for a new saw and the granite-topped hybrid was on sale at the time. It wasn’t the granite that sold me on it, though. It was the fit and finish of the saw overall and the inclusion of a riving knife in particular that helped me make that decision. As for the granite top my main concern was, like you said, the possibility of chipping. The top does, however, carry a 10 year warranty so I wasn’t quite so worried about that. I’ve had the saw coming up on a year now and I have yet to chip it, even after I inevitably dropped something (and a #8 jointer plane at that) right on top of one of the miter slots. Not even a scratch.
Overall Steel City makes well-built tools that are designed with woodworkers in mind, something that a lot of toolmakers would do well to emulate. The use of granite is a great idea on some tools (jointer) a nice, but not really necessary on othes (table saw, band saw) and just plain silly on others (midi lathe.) Still, any attempt at innovation in a world of manufacturing where very little has changed over the decades is worth at least considering.
Thanks,
Allen