Unknown Table Saw

[grsjax]

 

Anyone know anything about this table saw?  I picked it up recently and there is no brand name or indication of where or who made it.   Looks well made and solid.

Sorry about the upside down pictures.  I am not real good at graphic editing.

Edited March 13 by grsjax

[kurtvd19]

I can't remember the brand as there were several saws made with this junk motor type.  Jarmac? for the brand possibly.  A lot of end play so the blade kind of goes where it wants and it goes way too fast.    It's wort $5 at the most sorry but it's junk.

 

[Jaager]

It is a Jarmac.   The ID label has been removed.  It was made in a one-man shop in Springfield, IL.  When the owner died,  his shop died with him.

It filled the small table saw niche during the time between the loss of the Unimat with its saw attachment and the JIM saw.  The motor is probably a repurposed sewing machine motor - no power.  It sorta worked with stock that was essentially veneer thickness. 

The fence was a welded bar - low - no adjustment.  Simple miter gauge.  Two tracks -  so a home made sliding table worked for it.

If you make a sliding table - about a full afternoon's time expense -  it will be machine that fills the crosscut function that the recent chopper saw thread was all about.

Note that the blade is a slotting blade - too many teeth for anything more than thick veneer.

The companies that made reasonably priced blades that fit - Thurston and Martindale - no longer do.

 

I think that there was a similarly T-ball league disc sander in the Jarmac line. Not really good, frustrating, but better than nothing if it was the only thing available.

 

In my imagination, I can see this machine as a negative example for Jim. 

[druxey]

Jaager: Your reference to the Unimat saw attachment made me smile. Back in 1970 that was the only way I could cut plank and other stock. A lot of hit and miss with any cut depths or widths! And the dust everywhere....

[grsjax]

Did a bit of web crawling and found that the Jarmac is available from a number of vendors.  Don't know if it is still being manufactured but seems to be plenty available.  This one seems to be the "deluxe" version.  Tiny motor but apparently fairly reliable.  Motor can be upgraded with a new motor with the same form factor but twice the power.  Going to mess around with it a bit and then pass it along.

[Roger Pellett]

During my working career, I saw a number of these Jarmac saws in use at model ships operated by large engineering firms (Bechtel, Fluor, etc.) to build models of industrial installations.  The saws were used to cut plastic scale pipe and structural shapes to length.  Ripping would not have been required.  In the case of piping, the fittings all had sockets cast into the ends.  The cut length was slipped into the socket and glued so the length of the assembly could be adjusted slightly before gluing.  End play of the blade was therefore not a problem.

 

Roger