Hello all,
my friend was so pleased with the reincarnation I made him, he now wants me to make an Asrah table. when I made my first one, I had access to a large industrial table saw which made cutting the bevels easy. Hoever, now I only have a small workbench table with my skill saw attached to it. So question. Do any of you think a table without the bevels but using rather the ledge or step design would look OK? It would be easier for me to make with what I have . My other option is to include the price of a saw into the total price. Waht do you think?
Bruce

Bruce, I have access to a lot of tools and saws. We recently added an addition to the house and have a lot of stuff. If you need to use anything let me know.

Table only cost about $100 now a days. It is not that expensive. If you have the room for it.

If you wish to put pin stripping on the ledge this will help create the illusion. But the beveled table is better.

Or take Astinus offer up on the loan.

What makes this type of illusion work is the beveled edges, which fool the eye into reading the thing as just a flat surface and not paying any attention to it. Stepped edges tend to call attention to themselves.

So, I'd say you can go either of two ways. If you have a good circular saw, you can set it to cut accurate bevels and use a metal straight edge as a cutting guide. The trick here is to take your time on the setup and then on the cutting. A new carbide blade helps too.

The other way is to buy the best table saw you can afford and then put it to good use building more stuff. A cheapie may not give you the accuracy you will need with future projects. I bought a nice table saw and haven't regretted it for a second.

Thanks for your replies.
Even thouh a nonbeveled table may be easier, I decided I also want to to be something to talk about. So the good table saw will be the way to go. I talked with him the other day and he agreed to include the table saw as part of my price. We will shop around for a good one. I have seen lots at Home Depot nd Lows and someone suggersted Sears. Any particular brands any of you prefer?
Bruce

You can often find table saws on sale at various woodworking stores such as Woodcraft or Woodworker's Supply, and ocassionally at Sears. I bought a Jet on sale and saved somewhere around $200. Delta is good too, and I know people who swear by Craftsman.

Some woodworking magazines have yearly issues devoted to reviews of various tools, which can give you some comparison-shopping data. I use these all the time. Your local Borders or B&N may have some of these.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that the people at the dedicated woodworking stores are far more knowledgeable than those at Home Depot, Lowe's, or even Sears.

Do you have a router? they will do the same job as a table saw for angles I believe anyway

Roger

I have a Jet contractor saw and I really like it. I bought it to replace the Ryobi saw with the sliding table. The Ryobi saw was nice but it was underpowered and it was hard to keep everything aligned.

The Jet saw is rock solid (weighs a lot!) and comes with solid rip fence, even if you don't buy the more expensive fence option.

Grizzly Industrial (www.grizzly.com) has some nice saws, too. Some of their saws have been picked as top values by woodworking magazines.