# 8 problems & 8 solutions for my worksite table saw (Dewalt DWE7480)



## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

Welcome to my build thread. 

I’ve been lurking here long enough, I took the time to write up the problems with the saw, from a woodworking frame of mind, and my solutions – many inspired or taken from this site. Most of these problems are inherent to all jobsite table saws. Finally, I’m not responsible for what you do to your saw. Always follow your instruction manual.

I bought the Dewalt DWE7480, mainly because the rip fence design is (as far as I can tell) better than any other jobsite saw brand. And the 7480 is light and less expensive than others, I got it for $380. Let me say up front that for jobsite construction work, this tool might be just fine out of the box. But that’s not me. I want something for woodworking. But I absolutely do not have space for even a contractor saw and this will only ever get occasional use. I’m thankful to have something like this jobsite saw that I can store on a shelf when I’m not using it.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

#1:It needs to be set up very carefully. 

The ‘to do’ list is in the Adjustments part of the manual, p. 8 in my manual. 



The rail lock adjustment.
Adjust the rip scale. This is the clear plastic piece with a red line on the ruler to tell you how wide you’re cutting a piece.
Blade alignment. This is pretty simple. In theory. The saw rides in what is called a trunnion. The trunnion is mounted to the bottom side of the table in front and in back by 2 black bolts in each location. Loosen the front 2 bolts (picture) and the saw pivots on the back two. Get the blade parallel to the miter slot (how-to’s online), tighten the bolts, you’re done.
HOWEVER, the bolts on my saw were glued with a *serious* lock-tite. It was no ordinary locktite-blue. I kid you not, I snaped a saw alignment bolt *loosening* the bolt. The aluminum threads were fine, screw broke ~4 threads deep. Never seen that happen before. Way to go Dewalt! This was all sorts of fun to fix.​
Fence alignment adjustment.
Bevel adjustments, there are several.
The riving knife alignment. I removed the right side panel and flipped the saw on its side. Then I could get to the three set screws to adjust the riving knife pretty easily.
Miter adjustments. The miter fits so loose this is hopeless. WTF Dewalt? I’ll use my miter saw.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

#2 It needs a better sawblade.

No surprise here. Swap out the 24 tooth construction blade for something like a 40 tooth combination blade. The blade is ‘thin kerf’, so buy accordingly to use the stock riving knife. BTW, a Diablo blade from HD works great. I don’t think Diablo makes a different kerf.



#3 The stock throat plate is sloppy-loose and has waaay too much clearance

Build a zero-clearance insert. Lots of how-to’s online. I wanted it to be more snugly than stock, so didn’t just use a router flush cut bit with the stock plate. I tried to level it w/ hot glue like on Stumpy Nubs’s site, but it didn’t work perfectly. So I used set screws. Also, the stock plate has a lip on the back side (side away from user) that locks into the table and prevents the back side of the plate from coming up. It’s easy to duplicate this lip on the back edge of your new plate. The lip doesn’t fit tight until you hit it w/ a dab of hot glue, install it and it will mold perfectly to the bottom side of the table. Perfect fit. Keep the old insert handy for bevel cuts.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

#4 It isn’t easy to hold workpieces flush to the fence when you start a cut on these small saws. One fix is to find a way to make a featherboard work with the oversized miter slots.

Lots of chatter online about featherboards not fitting the miter slot on these saws. I found Rockler featherboards do well, If you get *really* aggressive about spreading/bending the slider apart with a screw driver. The slider ends up looking oval, but it’ll work. Sorta. The Dewalt table is so short that a featherboard *barely* fits. If you want the feathers in front of the blade (you do) then you have to have the miter sliders all the way to the front of the saw, where the first slider bar will barely grip at all.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

5) It has a small table, so build an extension, especially on the infeed side.

I found a pretty neat idea for a removable table extension on a video that you definitely should watch. (Link At Bottom) I like the basic design and they actually provide Sketchup plans. But there’s a lot that video doesn’t show.


 The measurements on the plans are wrong in a spot, I forget where. Double check before cutting. If anyone is interested I can post my annotated plans, I think I note the error there.
 If you want the thing to be easily removable, you have to route a channel for the ‘bulges’ in the table to slide through. In other words, the video shows them routing a pocket for the bulge, but when you lift the contraption off the table, the bulge is trapped in the pocket. You need to route the pocket downward to the bottom so you can lift it off the table. (see photo)
 BTW, those bulges are thicker aluminum than the rest of the side and good places to drill/tap the mounting bolts. (see photo)
 You absolutely want to make the height of the infeed and outfeed parts finely adjustable. Even if you get the height right today, it’ll never stay right. See picture for my solution. PITA, and not part of the video, but worth it.
 BTW, I added that vertical piece you see in the picture between the bolts to hold the infeed flat. My infeed side top piece was bowed slightly and prevented a nice flat fit to the table. Ignore that if your horizontal pieces stay flat.
 The last step is to rout slots to extend the miter slots of your saw. I settled to just cut these plenty wide to keep the wood out of the way of the runners on whatever sleds I end up making.
 
The in/outfeed support project was a pain in the neck. The video seemed fool-proof, but nothing went right. Note all the extra holes I drilled! But now that it’s done, the thing comes off and goes back on quickly and it stores on a wall above the garage door. So long term, I’m glad I did it.


Video link:


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

#6 The fence is too short, especially on the infeed side.


In fact, I feel the short fence is the real problem with jobsite saws, more so than the infeed support length. I feel having more of the workpiece registered against the fence in front of the blade makes me 10x more confident and my cuts are definitely better. You can have all the infeed support in the world, you still need the longer fence. There is no aftermarket solution, so I built an auxiliary fence.


The auxiliary fence needs to be *stiff* and *straight*. ¾” ply warps. And flexes. Even aluminum flexes. So a single piece of wood isn’t going to get it done. I used a torsion box design, like this (https://www.woodmagazine.com/tool-reviews/tablesaws/auxiliary-rip-fence). I built my auxiliary fence a hair taller than the stock fence (which is ~3 1/8”) so I can use those fancy fence clamps. 



Also, (spoiler alert) by making it a hair taller than the stock fence makes it possible to mount Boardmates to the top. More on that in a minute. If you want to go the Boardmates direction, or do something else that uses t-track on the top of the fence, make sure your center braces are spaced to line up w/ the pre-drilled holes on your t-track. The holes on my t-track were 4 inches apart, so my I built the fence a braces 4 inches apart. Finally, cut the brace pieces on the fence about 1/8”-3/16” shorter than the fence height. That prevents the middle pieces from creating a high spot if they slide out of place during the glue up.


Now my favorite part of the build. Using an auxiliary fence will mess up the ruler (rip scale) on the fence rail. BUT, for ~$13, PartsWarehouse will set you up with another one. As long as your fence is ~3” wide or more, which a torsion box fence will be, you have space to mount a second rip scale/ruler marker. Drill & tap a couple holes and mount it next to the original, label both, use both. $13 for one of the coolest parts of this project.


You’ll also need to remove the part of the fence that flips over and supports pieces on wide rips. It's a Dewalt thing. Does anyone use that anyway? There are plenty of work-arounds. Just clamp a piece of wood to the bottom of the fence if you need extra support on those wide rips.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

#7 Now a safety issue to resolve. The stock fence has no good options to mount an aftermarket workpiece support like boardmates or board buddies.

My solution is to mount boardmates to the top of the auxiliary fence. Bonus points if you add aluminum t-track to the top of the auxiliary fence so you can take them off on the fly. 

Now when I make a cut, my hand doesn’t ever go between the Boardmates unless I’m cutting a wide piece and have the blade guard in place. That’s a serious safety margin.


FYI, the boardmates work great with the auxiliary fence simply clamped to the factory fence. They do not lift the auxiliary fence off the table. Also, the boardmates are adjustable and will run as little as ~5/8” from the fence, so you can use them to rip fairly thin pieces. The riving knife won’t get in the way on thin rip cuts, as long as the knife is in the bottom position. With slightly wider cuts, put the riving knife in the upper position and you can use the blade guard.






#8 The factory-supplied pushstick has a nifty clip to hold it to the back of the fence when not in use. But the stick itself is a horrible design.


I tossed mine in the trash. I built a pile of the ‘push shoe’ style. A nice design is available here. Also, a narrow piece of ¼” plywood about 2’ long works great for a push stick with the Boardmates. Especially if you cut a notch in the front end. That’s what I use most of the time


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

And that’s it. I now have a very safe, very accurate, very easy to use saw compared to what came in the box. The neatest part of all this is everything is easily removed and stored. I can remove the fence and in-outfeed support in 3 minutes. I can reassemble everything in 4 minutes, more if I have to fine tune the height of the in/out feeds. Given the necessary evil of sharing a garage with -- gasp -- cars, this ain’t a bad setup. 

All in, I have ~$200 into the mods & add-ons, including a new saw blade, lumber, featherboard, t-track & Boardmates, and tap & die kit for the snapped bolt & extra measurement window piece. I haven’t had any trouble reaching under the infeed support to turn the saw on/off or adjust the fence. I may still get a foot pedal on/off control to make that hands-free. 

And one problem I did not find a solution for is dust collection. Yikes this thing is dusty. Even w/ my shop-vac hooked up it ain’t a pretty sight. My work around is to go outside when possible and wear a dust respirator. And use my overhead air purifier in the garage.


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## DrRobert (Apr 27, 2015)

For ww’ing, you’re going to reach the limit of a job site saw pretty quickly, but, that depends on what type of ww’ing your doing, and you’re expectations.

The biggest problems with them are power, accuracy, inferior fences and I don’t believe they can take a dado set.

That said, lots of people use them and build very nice projects.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*You did a very thorogh job!*

Basically, you built an entire new saw around your original saw making it about the same size as a hybrid. I don't know if you considered a hybrid when making the original purchase, but that would have been my recommendation. They come in two versions, an open bottom with short legs and a full cabinet style. Most of the issue you worked so hard to solve on the jobsite are incorporated on the hybrids. BUT, that's water under the bridge at this point. You may have the only "hybrid" job site saw! :vs_cool:
I feel for you guys who have to share space with "cars". My latest garage never saw a car and was turned into a shop from the day I built it. Cleaning off snow and ice here in Michigan is no picnic.


FWIW, my table saw "collection" ranges from a really nice Bosch job site, a great Craftsman 10" hybrid, several now extinct Craftsman direct drive contractor saws and a beastly 12" 5 HP Powermatic. I started with a belt drive 10" Craftsman purchased with high school graduation money when I was 18, 60 + years ago. Each has it's own unique characteristics, but like a lot of tools, you need more than one type for different situations. They are now part of a dedicated wood only shop above a metal only workshop below.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

DrRobert said:


> For ww’ing, you’re going to reach the limit of a job site saw pretty quickly, but, that depends on what type of ww’ing your doing, and you’re expectations.
> 
> The biggest problems with them are power, accuracy, inferior fences and I don’t believe they can take a dado set.
> 
> That said, lots of people use them and build very nice projects.


The better jobsite saws take dado sets, although some jobsite saws require a special adapter if the dado stack is wider than 1/2 inch. 

In my opinion, the biggest issues with jobsite saws are the short lead-in distance between the front of the table and the blade (especially for rip cuts), and the flimsy aluminum tables. 
@Lakewood Brian built a longer auxiliary fence to help align rip cuts before they encounter the blade, and his saw appears to have a cast iron top.

Brian customized the saw the way he wants to fit his needs, and I hope he enjoys working with it. I am impressed with the customization work he did, and especially with how well he documented it for others to follow in his footsteps.


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## Lakewood Brian (Nov 15, 2019)

Sharing space with cars is tough. Add automotive tools, bikes, kayaks and stuff to the list. I thought hard about a contractor saw, but I _really _need to get this off the ground and put away. This design disassembles and the bits go away when I'm not in woodworking mode. Some day I'll post about my fleet of saws and this one's niche will be mobility.


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## Fundiwambao (Apr 25, 2021)

Good info about the dewalt jobsite saw. I have a different problem with same. after carefully adjusting the new blade , when I tried to rip a 2”x 4” piece of pine or oak thru the 4” face, i of course had to flip the board over to complete the full cut off the 4” side. The blade always appeared off square until i discovered that it was the fence that was not perpendicular to the table. Does anyone else have this problem and if so how do you solve it : I dont see any way to adjust the fence.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

That is some good information for the Dewalt jobsite saw. My rip fence is different and is easily adjustable to align the fence with the blade and miter slots. My saw is a DWE7491 and is the larger of the Dewalt jobsite table saws. I gave my 3 hp 220 Unisaw away as it was just way way too large for my small shop. It is kinda hard to get use to this saw. I do have one problem with the fence that I think I have a solution to correct. The fence is not square or plumb to the table. The top of the fence tilts toward the blade which makes it harder to correct.

I have had the saw too long to have them send me a new fence. It has been in storage for almost a year. Removing the screws to shim the fence plumb will strip the plastic out and the fence will be shot. My solution is to file the bracket that slips over the adjusting bolt that mounts to the rack and pinion extension bars. The saw in the illustration above doesn't have this set up and would be next to impossible to correct the problem I have. When I saw the wooden axillary fence I thought it would solve my problem. To correct the problem I have, the wooden fence would have to drag on the table of the saw which I don't care much for. It needs to float above the table and that would be too much strained on the already out of plumb fence. Any suggestions how this may be corrected instead of filing the hook on the mounting bolt?


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## Fundiwambao (Apr 25, 2021)

BigJim said:


> That is some good information for the Dewalt jobsite saw. My rip fence is different and is easily adjustable to align the fence with the blade and miter slots. My saw is a DWE7491 and is the larger of the Dewalt jobsite table saws. I gave my 3 hp 220 Unisaw away as it was just way way too large for my small shop. It is kinda hard to get use to this saw. I do have one problem with the fence that I think I have a solution to correct. The fence is not square or plumb to the table. The top of the fence tilts toward the blade which makes it harder to correct.
> 
> I have had the saw too long to have them send me a new fence. It has been in storage for almost a year. Removing the screws to shim the fence plumb will strip the plastic out and the fence will be shot. My solution is to file the bracket that slips over the adjusting bolt that mounts to the rack and pinion extension bars. The saw in the illustration above doesn't have this set up and would be next to impossible to correct the problem I have. When I saw the wooden axillary fence I thought it would solve my problem. To correct the problem I have, the wooden fence would have to drag on the table of the saw which I don't care much for. It needs to float above the table and that would be too much strained on the already out of plumb fence. Any suggestions how this may be corrected instead of filing the hook on the mounting bolt?


Jim et al., i decided to put a 1” wide strip of gorilla tape on working fact of the inward leaning fence on my dewalt dee7491 and for now at least it works great. Thanks for your ideas and hope mine adds to the general knowledge about the issue. Where is Dewalt on this anyway?


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

Fundiwambao said:


> Jim et al., i decided to put a 1” wide strip of gorilla tape on working fact of the inward leaning fence on my dewalt dee7491 and for now at least it works great. Thanks for your ideas and hope mine adds to the general knowledge about the issue. Where is Dewalt on this anyway?


That is a good idea, that would just about take care of the gap at the bottom of the fence. Does the gorilla tape have any drag to it or is it slick? I appreciate the suggestions, thank you.


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