I Came, I Saw…

…I cut a little wood.

The Armature Assembly arrived in all its glory today. It took only about 10 minutes to get it in the motor and then to get the motor put back together. I’ve done this three times now, so it’s become old-hat.

New Armature Assembly

I then had to get the motor back in the table saw. Again, if I had 8-inch long fingers that were the diameter of pencils this would have been a simple task taking just a few minutes. As it was, it took me about a half hour to get the motor in and all the other parts put back together.

Once everything was in place, but before I put the saw blade back on, I did a little test run. I don’t always have a lot of faith in my own abilities, so I take more precautions than may be necessary. I put on goggles, ear plugs, and shielded my chest with the saw blade. I then get in to a crouching position and stand back from the saw as far as is physically possible and still be able to reach the switch. Then, holding my breath and squinting my eyes, I carefully pull up on the on/off switch. Buzzzzzzzz.

The saw came to life and sounded perfect. Whew!

I’m always a little skeptical when I put things back together like this. For several weeks after I rewired the house I would every so gently turn lights on and off, and unplug appliances as if I were disassembling a bomb. I just didn’t trust it. Several hours after I hooked up the main-disconnect, the sub-panels, and brought all the new wiring on-line, we had a street wide power outage. There was about 10 or 15 seconds of absolute certainty that I had somehow caused this with the new wiring in my house. Now a few years have passed I slap on switches and give little regard when plugging things in. It will take a few weeks before I fully trust the table saw again.

After I felt as secure as I can at this point in the process I put the saw blade on and did a few test cuts. It cuts, feels, looks, and sounds just like it did when I first bought it. I will declare this a success, unless something goes horribly wrong in the next few days.