kmmcrafts

Congrats on the new saw.. Unfortunately and sadly almost every story on these saws getting sold is because the person that bought it new had passed or health issues come up and no longer can use.. That's how I got my 226VS Ultra still in sealed in the box. Old guy that ordered it had a stroke and thankfully was still alive but he couldn't use the new saw he had bought. Best $400 I spent, LOL There is a small hole on top of the upper arm at the front.. right above where the tension lever goes through the arm.. put a drop or two of oil in that hole ( preferably at the end of the day so it has time to run down into the cam and not sling all over when you turn on the saw LOL Don't ask about that one, ) You should oil the wedge and that cam I believe the manual says every 10 hours or so of use. Other than that the rest is all sealed bearings. Also on the bottom side of the upper arm just about directly below where that hole is on the top side there will be a very small allen set screw.. that is to adjust the tension cam to "lock" down. Proper adjustment is it should have some resistance when no blade in in the saw move the lever with light pressure like you're tensioning a blade.. you should feel some resistance when that lever is about 1/8 - 1/4 inch above the top of the arm If not then you need to turn the set screw in until it has a slight resistance. There isn't much info out there on adjusting these Hawks.. even Hawk's manuals don't really go in depth about these adjustments. One of these day I would like to make a video of how to tune these for the best experience.. There is also adjustments at the back of the saw so that the upper arm will bottom out at the correct height to clamp the blade.. I see so many people fiddling with getting that upper arm in the right position to clamp the blade all the time.. though for some reason Pegas blades are not consistent in length so you still have to adjust for a new blade but once it's in right your good until you change to a different blade.

Tension lever is at the front circled in the picture. The part at the back is to adjust how much tension is applied.. The back part of the saw under that tension adjuster back there will be a wedge shape piece..That wedge is supposed to be very pointed and almost sharp.. That would be one of the telltale signs of how much use it's had. The wedge over time will sort of get a more rounded edge on it and be a indication if it's rounded over it may have been used more than you might think. But new wedge is are available for like $15 I think.. and you can even just put it on a flat surface and sand each side until it is pointed again. The front tension lever is another wear point. It has a tension cam underneath the arm or inside the arm that can wear out but again.. those two parts are still used today on the newest saw made and readily available and not too pricey. Anything else that wears on these saws is pretty much available at any hardware store.. That's why I love these saws. I've rebuilt my Excalibur when it had around 250 hours on it.. at just over 500 hours on it now it is getting loose again.. My Hawk has around 500 hours on it and nothing has been done.. even the wedge is still pointed.. this is how well built they are.. LOL Some people have issues with the clamping systems on some of these saws as they are more picky with clamping and tension etc.. so keep that in mind.. Some pick right up on it while others struggle and give up.. If you can get the hang of that without much trouble this saw would out last you and any grandchildren too, LOL They run really quite smooth however you should be aware that they do have a couple harmonic balance spots on the speed dial that they get a little shaky but turn the dial up or down a smig and they're smooth.. You can call Bushton Manufacturing with the serial number and they can give you a lot of info on it such as what year etc.. any records of it being in for a rebuild or service.. From what I can see of the saw it's not been used much I don't think.. I seen the thing pop up on Marketplace.. if it were closer to southern MI I might have checked it out.. I have two 26 inch saws but wouldn't mind selling off one of them and getting the smaller 20" like this one.. They take up a large area as the stand is part of the saw so they're big and heavy.

Looks like a very nice saw for the money. I'd say it's probably a 2000 - 2006 model by the looks of the tag.. That would be a 20 inch Hawk Ultra.. really good saws.

Friend sent this to me and I thought it was very interesting so I'm sharing it with you. Talk about handmade.. this is hand and foot made. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1078714080133567

Totally agree but I'm not wanting the be the guinea pig to try it either, LOL... IF I was going to make them for veggies I'd probably have just spent the extra $35 for the Cedar post.. next year they'll probably come out saying Cedar is toxic and you need to spend $100 per board for some new engineered something that isn't toxic, and probably just something new that they can invest in without any science behind it..

I've tried several times too.. anything my wife plants does great but anytime I try planing a $20 bill tree it just rots and then I'm out $20... too cheap to try $50's or 100's.. maybe coins grow better. Heck, even if I could get some car parts to grow.. Now I'm getting so broke I'm thinking I need to try growing hamburgers.. getting kinda hungry.. These here that I made will be for flowers since i used treated lumber for the post and the post mounting 2x4's. They say the chemicals in treated wood will leach into the soil and make you grow poison veggies.. so just putting flowers in these.

I should have mentioned that I knew it'd turn grey.. was just worried more about the longevity of the structure, especially inside where the moist dirt will be. Then come to think of it..this is what many raised bed gardens are made from... and bird houses etc.

So, for those that seen my last topic about my bucket garden stand. I made a planter box now out of Cedar picket fence board. Many say that Cedar doesn't need a finish.. I'm not sure if that is true or not so I thought I'd get some opinions from some of you all. The reason I'm not too sure about that is because Menards and like stores sell the picket fence board with or without sealer.. I got just the plain old Cedar. I mounted a post in the middle to install some hangers on for either some hanging plants or solar lights. I think mine will have solar lights but I'm making one for my son and another for a friend and not sure what they will hang on the post just yet. I wanted to use a Cedar post so it'd match but and $35 increase in price I opted for treated post and treated 2x4 to mount the post in the box. I'm thinking I might paint the post but I'm not sure about painting treated lumber.. so maybe it'll just be what it is. If you all think that the wood should have a sealer on it I think I might just spray a couple coats of Spar since I have a couple extra cans left from a CNC sign project I did a year ago that was going to be out in the weather. Probably the deck sealer stuff would be better but I'm not looking to spend much money on this stuff and rather just use up stuff I have around here.

Congrats on the new saw!! You should get many years of joy out of if..

Thanks for the tips JT much appreciated The buckets ( according to the internet ) if they have the H2 code in the triangle shaped info code on the buckets is supposed to be food grade buckets. I thought the same thing but again.. according to the internet, LOL.. I would of rather had white buckets but only thing locally in stock was these ugly Menards green ones. Now if I hit the stores today they probably have hundreds of white ones, LOL I did look online yesterday and those PCV boards are not cheap around here, and I didn't see 2x4 size but probably the 1 x's would be strong enough I don't know.. be a lot of weight once ten buckets get filled with soil and water etc.. These 2x4's were only just over $2 each.. I have less than $100 into the buckets,paint, deck screws, and I have enough supplies not counting the buckets to build another for myself which I think I might do. Will need another box of screws and buckets but should have enough paint etc for another one. Cheapest PVC board I could find that might come close to working was nearly $25 each. The sun also makes the PVC more brittle over time so I'm not quite convinced it would be a "lot" better for the amount of money. Yeah I did spend around an hour painting them and I still have the ends and another coat so you could be right on that point I suppose.. at least for using a treated 2x4 since they aren't a whole lot more than these regular construction ones. At the end of the day the learning experience is sometimes worth more money than I saved anyway.. you always find things you'd do different when doing something for the first or even the second or third time in some cases.

I was thinking the same thing actually.. If I make any more that's probably what I'll use. This was my first bigger project build and the reason I went with cheap lumber.. plus I thought I had left over paint but it turned out to be no good. I'm also unsure how I'll like this style of gardening. I've done some raised bed gardening but I still put in about a 30 x 30 in ground garden every year so just experimenting and not really wanting to use high priced lumber etc until I know I'm going to like these.

Went to my local hardware that I'm always going to often so they know who I am, LOL.. The owner of the place was there and I was looking at the paints etc. asked if I needed some help. Cheapest exterior paint they had was $24 a quart. Not knowing if a quart would do it for both of my gardens I really didn't want a oddball mixed color but I asked anyway if he had anything that was mixed wrong color. He said no not really but I do have some old oil based exterior paint that I'm not supposed to sell anymore.. then took me in the back and open the cans to show me the colors he had. Only had gallon cans and I didn't think I'd need a whole gallon but when he told me he'd take $20 each for them I ended up bringing home slate grey.. I'm so glad I got the gallon as that wood is really soaking up the paint.. I've used over a quart already but only painted maybe 80% of both of them. I stood them up on end so really just have both ends to paint since I couldn't reach the top too well and the bottom of coarse was sitting on the ground. I'll need to paint at least one more coat so I'm pretty sure I'll use at least 3/4 of that gallon on these. He put the paint on the shaker for me and stood there talking for a minute. He said they outlawed all the oil base paints and he had to get all new equipment as the old equipment wouldn't measure the new stuff correctly. Said he had to scrap all his color pigments and he had a lot that was scraped. Had to package all the stuff up and send it FedEx to a hazmat place where they supposedly dispose of it all properly. He was saying it's getting crazy with all the regulations. Mention even some LED lights he can no longer sell. They have to put out a certain amount of Lumens per watt now.. and some of the older bulbs he had to take off his shelves.. Getting to the point where I feel like I'm living in California near Ray @OCtoolguy LOL. I'm going through the same stuff with my clocks on Amazon.. I may have to start selling them without the battery, LOL.. Amazon has been taking down my clock listings due to not being in compliance with their new rules for selling things with batteries.. They have a hole list of stupid stuff to fill out to be in compliance. I have over 600 clocks in inventory and I think once I sell them out on Etsy and other sites I'm going to be don't with that bit too. It's getting pretty ridiculous with all this environmental crap.. One day I'm probably going to be required to measure how much sawdust I'm polluting the air with and pay a hazard tax if I want to keep selling, LOL Hopefully this doesn't go into a political thing here, I'm just having a rant because of Amazons Battery issue and then the guy talking at the Hardware today about things..

Well, this is really about the first thing I've made besides scroll work.. I'm not anywhere near a pro at construction or building things from wood. Give me a hunk of iron and I can weld / make about anything but never had any experience with building with wood. I might get brave and try a planter box and a bird house next.. this project gave me some inspiration.. Good thing I named the business KevsKrafts and not say anything about scroll saw work in the name.. pretty generic and could become metal art or anything so there is that going for the lousy name I chose for a business name.. Now if building big block V8's consider crafts? Who said it had to be wood blocks..

I felt this would get seen more here rather than the other forum topics so hopefully I’ll get some good input on this. I built two of these bucket gardens, one for a friend and one for myself. To do over I’d have just used treated lumber or cedar. But now that they are built I’m wondering what would be a decent finish to help preserve the standard construction 2x4’s. Originally I thought I had some leftover exterior paint but when I open the cans they are mostly dried up so I originally thought I could buy cheap lumber and use up my old paints I had laying around. Now that I’ve got to buy something is why I say to do over I’d just use treated lumber. Since this is a garden thing it’s obviously going to be outside and getting watered etc. Not looking to make it last forever but I don’t really want to just leave it raw either. Thinking about cheap options is someone else’s leftover paint from the restore places or some paint that was mixed incorrectly so long as it’s exterior and not interior but thought maybe I ask here as maybe someone has a better idea. Don’t really care too much about looks or colors really within reason, I mean I don’t really want fluorescent bright pink or totally ugly colors . Anyway thoughts on something to use or am I on the right track with just using an exterior paint and call it good. Nothing in this type of setting is going to last forever other than metal so I know it’s going to rot at some point.

There is a type 1 and type 2.. for the 2 speed model. I don't know for 100% sure but all the type 1's I've seen didn't have the nice Quickset II blade chucks.. I think that is the only difference but as I said not 100% sure of that. So the type one you had to use a special wrench for the upper clamp. Just putting that out there if anyone was to seek out one of these old gems, LOL

Yeah but for a person on a tight budget these saws do still work well.. are they a Hawk or Hegner? no far from it.. I've not seen too many DW 788's around for $65 either so there is that.. I guess it's just me but at one time I didn't have money to spend on higher end stuff and that feebee 2 speed Delta made me a lot of money.. Not junk saws but not anything close to a Cadillac either.. IF I had the choice between the old Delta and a cheap Harbor Freight or one of those other really cheap entree level saws I would hands down choose the Delta.. provided it was in good working order. You can find them cheap at garage sales many times as good ones down to just parts machines. Everyone starts somewhere and that is how I started in the hobby / business.. In some ways I see them as a better more user friendly saw than a DW because the upper arm is spring loaded so it goes up out of the way on it's own. The quickset II blade chucks where the choice of blade chucks by many scrollers and they even had retrofit kits to put them on Hawks.. I believe Rolf has these clamps on his Hawk G4 actually.. I don't understand why people think the thumb screws are considered a good set up.. They've clearly never used a set of those Delta Quickset clamps..

The two speed variant is the saw I learned to scroll on. And I used that saw for quite a few years.. Still have it but don't use it. It was my fathers first "new" saw he bought and I was only like 14 years old and went with him to get it. He wore it out two times and rebuilt it and the third time he went and bought the variable speed version. He hung onto the 2 speed one for a long time and one day I asked if he still had it and if I could take it to try my hand at scrolling. He told me it worked but the bearings where bad and didn't saw quite right. Brought it home and tried cutting a 2x4 in half and said to myself that thing was slower than a handsaw and I throw it under the workbench and not to be used for several years. LOL My father had passed on before he got to actually see me get into the scrolling and I rebuilt the saw the 4th time. That was when parts were hard to source but I did find everything I needed NOS.

Looks like a model 40-540? They was made from around 1990 until maybe around 2000 ish then they went to a 250SS Shopmaster. Decent saws back in the day but now days many parts are obsolete..

The new Delta has the same set up as your King. Basically a grey colored DeWalt really. Unfortunately the Quickset blade clamps and the parts are no longer available.

Hard to beat those old P-20 saws and the nice quickset II blade chucks.. Too bad other manufactures didn't pick up on that style of blade chucks.

99% of my projects could be done on a 16 inch and probably even a 14" saw.. I have two 26" saws and a 21 and 18" saw.. It is nice to be able to have the option for cutting very large projects.. it's also nice to have more shop space for other useful tools, especially if your space is limited. Everyone is going to have different opinions based on what projects they make. Largest projects I recall doing was a 4ft wide x 2ft tall sign.. I did this back when the only saw I had was a 20" Dewalt. Blades can be modified by bending the ends so you can cut from the side of the saw instead of in front.. Spiral blades are also quite helpful in large projects.. No more large projects I do I really could just have a 21" saw and make do with how I go about cutting a large project.. IF I was always doing large stuff then yes a large saw would be a must have.. Pattern designers typically design stuff that works on most standard sized saws. I personally think a 21" saw is plenty large enough to do most stuff comfortably anyway. I guess you have to figure out if the space is going to be an issue as well as the price of the saw going to be worth it for the amount of projects you'll do with that big of a saw is the bottom line. Another tool could be had for that extra cash and also could use the spot in the shop for that extra space too.. Also feel like the extra cost of the saw is lost IF/When it's time to sell it off.. They seem to sell harder and don't bring the cash that the cheaper smaller saw would. Something I've seen time and time again is when folks retire they decide to travel in a camper, sell homes to downsize etc.. Many of them ask questions about small lightweight saws so yet having to buy a smaller saw to downsize.. Just something else to think about.. I know my wife and I plan to do a little RVing and I intend to keep my small lightweight Hegner to take along. I can't imagine dragging my 26" Hawks around in a RV, LOL.. Not only is it heavy as crap.. I could put 3 hegners in the same spot that one Hawk takes up.

ahh, okay.. makes a bit more sense to me now, I was wondering how the heck you might hold the filter while also handling the leaf blower.. I figured I'd try to get the wife to hold the filter while I blow the dust out of it.. If nothing else it might get some views on instagram, tiktok and youtube..

You can also just tap them on the clothesline post to knock off the big stuff.. just don't do it when there is clean cloths on the line.. Don't ask how I found that one out.. I now go over to the neighbors and tap the dust out of it inside his car on the steering wheel.. Just kidding.. I never thought about using the leaf blower, I've used the air compressor to blow off the dust.. this works a few times but over time it gets too much build up and makes it not as efficient as is should / could be.. so it is best to change it every few times of blowing it out. You'd be surprised at how much better it works with a brand new filter. Something I find odd is.. no matter the brand name.. they all seem to be the same machine with a different price and color, LOL.. I have the Grizzly one.. bought it on sale for about the price of the WEN model one, but that was before WEN came out with one so there is that.

They sure are pricey for what you get.. Maybe they are much more durable than a Co2 laser.. I don't know much about the diode type lasers as I've never used one. I have one that came with my CNC router but everyone on the CNC router groups say they aren't worth using as they are way too underpowered and very slow to do a job. They've come a long way with these diode type lasers though and many claim they can cut through wood comparable to a Co2 laser.. however the price of this so called 40W laser is more than buying a decent 60W Co2 with a larger work area so I'm not sure I'd ever recommend going with something like this. I say so called because a lot of these diode lasers are "claimed" to be X amount of watts but that is not measured the same way as a Co2 type laser.. I recall reading that the diode wattage is not the output power but more like a power consumption.. or something like that. where as a Co2 is the output power. They say a 40W diode is really about the equivalent to around a 10W Co2.. I think it's pretty hard to beat the power / price cost of the Omtech Co2 laser line up.. They are cheap China made lasers but they are pretty good quality for the money (Though most all the diodes are also China products) Their "polar" laser is a copy of a Glowforge. The polar is around $3000 last I knew, and a Glowforge starts at $6000.. https://omtechlaser.com/collections/omtech-laser-engraving-cutting-and-marking-machines I've got two of their 40W machines but back when I got mine they was about $300. The second one I picked up used and came with a lot of extra goodies for $250 a couple years ago. Bottom line in my opinion is.. Do Your Research and decide what laser is better for the money for the projects you plan to do..

I still try to haggle even if it's a good buy. The Free Hegner I picked up is a example.. he was asking $50 for it.. I mentioned it didn't have any blade clamps and we looked for some in the shop. Guy said well I guess I don't have any and I need it gone so if you want it take it or it's going in the dumpster, LOL.. I said okay I'll take it then.. He even carried it up the steep hill and loaded it in my car. I planned to offer $30 be he didn't let me get to the punch line.. lucky for me I turned down the $60 one the year before at an estate sale and then I bought the box of blades which once I got home I found I had 4 Hegner clamps in the bottom. Box of blades was actually free too because they found it after the guy that bought the saw had already left so they said I could just take the blades and parts.