  For me, turning on a new power tool for the first time feels like standing on a high diving board. I went through this with my router, which sat unplugged for months after I bought it. I'd handled an identical router in my father's shop with no problem, and yet, I was half expecting this one to launch itself across the room in a shower of splinters the moment the bit touched the wood. It didn't, and I used it to form a nice roundover, only part of which looked like it was done by a drunk Parkinson's patient. Flipping the switch on the Delta TS220 filled my mind with similar apprehensions. Maybe the lights would go out.
Maybe the breaker panel would blow out like the bridge of the Enterprise taking a photon torpedo hit. Maybe I left a wrench or something in the saw body, which would cause the blade to fly apart and spew shrapnel all over. Maybe the saw would judder violently across the floor, like an off-balance washing machine. Or would it explode? How to make a $180 saw as quiet as a $550 saw: a $6 pair of earplugs I turned it on, and it didn't explode. Instead, it jumped abruptly to life, the way that universal motors do, and spun the blade in much the way I thought it ought to.
I had some stuff to cut, so I got it ready. Which brings me to my first jig. Many sources, including urlLink my saw manual , advise improving the miter gage by attaching a long piece of wood to its face, thus making a straight fence that pushes the work across the table without permitting it to wobble so much. Problem is, the work still drags on the table. What you really want is a sled or sliding table. Tiny sled for an even tinier saw than mine, from Wood magazine.
I have many dozens of pages of plans for such crosscut sleds, or cutoff boxes, or whatever you want to call them. They all require you to cut hardwood runners that fit in the miter gage slot. And they have to fit precisely , or else the sled will wiggle, defeating the whole purpose. I had a plan to use my miter gage to guide a crosscut sled, but first, just for kicks, I tried cutting a runner out of oak. I got the thickness I wanted, then went for the width. Rip a hairsbreadth off, try to put it in the miter slot, rip another hairsbreadth off.
Repeat until it fits. I got it really close, then shaved off a hairsbreadth too much. Wiggly runner. But the saw wasn't to blame. It was doing a great job on this delicate work. The fence locked down straight, and the supplied blade (a nice carbide-tipped combination blade) cut smooth.
The guard/splitter/antikickback assembly worked as advertised, and I didn't have to throw it away, as some online reviewers had suggested. Back to my jig, which I regard as a major breakthrough in shop-rigged miter gage improvements. It combines the miter face fence idea with a crosscut sled. The idea is to glue the "fence" to a slab of sheet goods, cut the slab down to size, carefully set the miter gage to 90 degrees, then bolt the fence to the miter gage. This is as quick and easy as bolting a board to the miter gage, and it provides the sliding bed of a cutoff box. urlLink Fanciest crosscut sled ever.
$35, wood not included. I wanted to use a 2'x2' slab of 1/4" tempered hardboard, shiny side down, for the sliding bed, but the local Big Box was all out, and so I settled for 1/4" hardwood plywood. Bit of a mistake, as thin plywood tends not to lie completely flat. Next time, I'll go with hardboard or thicker plywood. For the fence, I used a 18" length of nominal 2"x2" (really 1.5" x 1.5") poplar I had lying around, because it was perfectly straight and square. I stuck a couple of 1/4" hanger bolts in it and attached it to the miter gage with wing nuts and washers.
Presto: An easy-on/easy-off miter gage fence with a sliding bed. It worked great for crosscutting some 12" wide panels I'm using to build a storage bench. There's one little hitch, but I'll get to that next time. In slicing the plywood to size, I was amazed at the accuracy of the measuring tape on the front fence rail. To be honest, I expected nothing from it. It's just a decal.
The one on my father's contractor's saw is off by 1/16", and I expected much worse here. Much to my surprise, it was accurate to within a hair of a hair. Once again, the fence locked down straight, and the plywood edges came out nicely square. The verdict on the saw so far: Straight fence, nice blade, accurate rip gauge, quiet motor (given earplugs), doesn't explode. Far from useless. The verdict on my jig: A revolution.
Next: Project 1-- a storage bench 
