ThinkPads and Vinegar

Sometimes, all manner of otherwise unrelated items cross each others' paths, stars align just right and fortune smiles on us mere mortals (or Frugal Propellerheads). 

Some of you might remember that a few weeks ago, I posted about my "other" hobby, that of woodworking. As you might imagine, I approach all my hobbies the same way..... with a plan to upgrade over time and to be ready to use opportunities as they present themselves. A few years ago, I got to the point in my woodworking where my wife bought me a little table saw for Christmas. It was one of those $100 Christmas specials that you see stacked in the aisles of Walmarts all over the nation as we approach the holiday season. It was a little Black and Decker and over the course of the next couple of years, it did it's share of work. But as you can imagine, they aren't really a serious tool. The fence never would align correctly, and it was severely underpowered. They're really a $40 circular saw mounted upside-down on an aluminum table with a plastic base. I'm not even going to bother to depict it here. So, after a few items constructed, I was ready to graduate to a more substantial machine. Where-upon, I fell for the Ryobi BT3000 that you see above. Let's just say that it's a gadgeteer's table saw. If you want to look it up, you'll see that it can be set up to do lots of things, ranging from being a router table to having an on-board sliding miter table. My issue with it was that, I never used any of those features and it turned out to not hold settings very well! 

So, here we go..... I had sold the Black and Decker for around $60, then added money earned for computer work etc. to buy the Ryobi for about $250. I did add a kit to it which cost me about $80, so I had $330 invested in it. A few weeks ago, I sold it for $300 and started looking for table saws on Craigslist. 

I learned that among others brands and models, various versions of the venerable Craftsman 113.xxxx table saw could be had for anywhere from $75 to $200 depending on age, general condition and of course; seller's situation. Let me go ahead and explain my plan here. These are the next level up in table saws. The main feature that separates them from ones like mine is the cast iron top. These lend stability and tend to be very hard wearing, so they last forever. There's virtually no difference between a 60's version from an 80's version. Of course, there are other table saws out there of this style, but these are legendary. 

...... then there were these. The Delta 36-725, "10" Contractor's Saw" selling at your local Lowe's for $599. I kept finding reasons to go by there and then swing by hardware and stare at it.... trying hard to dream up scenarios where I could come up with the $300 difference between what I had and what I needed to buy it. It was like something out of the movie "Christmas Story"! And just when I had resigned myself to refurbishing an old Craftsman, it came up in conversation with my buddy the science teacher, that he had one of these and it was just a magical as I had envisioned...... drat.....double drat!!! And throw in a dang-nabbit for good measure! To make it worse; various needs arose around that time and I spent about $140 of what I had for a number of unexpected eventualities (which I expected to get back). Let's all say DRAT again! Oh, it actually gets worse, so bear with me on this....!

In the meantime; I found a CL ad for a Rigid TS3650 for $325 in Dallas. A similar saw to the aforementioned Delta, but had an inferior fence, plus it was older. I managed to talk the guy down to $300, however, he had very tight time restrictions and I was going to be out of town that Saturday for an academic competition. So I arranged to get it from him between 2:30 and 3:30 that Sunday, not knowing that my son's swim meet wasn't just Saturday....... it was going to be that Sunday as well from 1:30 to 3:30. Yup.... no saw. The guy wouldn't budge on a meet time. It was just as well, since I was going to have to ask my wife for a loan from our actual bank account anyway to make up the difference.

Then, magic happened.... 

..... or more specifically, ThinkPad magic. After having my son's old ThinkPad X220 on Craigslist for several weeks without much interest, a buyer appeared out of nowhere and wanted to buy it rather quickly...... for the $165 asking price. Which as it turns out came to $325 total of cash in hand. But wait: there's more magic. A week or so before that, I had found one of these Delta Table saws list for $500 literally "in my backyard", or in Poetry, Texas which is a few miles up the road. Then, about the middle of the week before Thanksgiving, the guy dropped the price to the magical $325. So, I texted and found that he did indeed have that saw still and yes, he was selling at $325, AND yes he would be happy to meet me at my house with the saw since I was leaving town that day to go to Eastern Oklahoma! Oh yeah; and all this was happening while the other guy who wanted the ThinkPad was driving down from about an hour away to buy it.... Whew! 

What about the "Vinegar" part? The saw came looking about like this. It had gotten rained on which you can imagine wasn't great for cast iron. Plus, it was missing some bolts for the fence rails. After a trip to Ace Hardware for bolts and Google/Youtube for info, I bought some 3m Green pads and went to work on it with, first some WD40, then the vinegar. Apparently, vinegar reacts with rust and gets turned into this kind of slurry that can then be scrubbed loose and wiped away. After that an application of old fashion Johnson paste wax to combat the moist air of East Texas, and it looks pretty much like the ad picture above! Sure, it's scratched up a bit, but most importantly, it cost me the $325 that I had and that's a good thing.