My Cabinet Saw

So it’s August, 2005, and I’m looking forward to a week’s vacation around my wedding anniversary. The first night of my vacation, my dad calls me and says “Alex. Do you have a pen and paper? Take down this number. Rockwell 10 inch table saw. 15 inch DoAll band saw. Must Sell…” He’s out of breath! So I write down the phone number and we chat for a while. He tells me to call him after I go in, and let him know what else they had.

Later, I call the number. It turns out to be a small fiberglass manufacturing shop about 1/4 mile from my mom’s house. It was after business hours, so I called the next morning. I asked about it, and he said to come on down and take a look. David was yelling at Katie in the background, and he said “bring your little helper there, too.” At that point, David and I went off to look at it. I hadn’t mentioned tools to Bonny yet – I was going out on the guise of running errands… I know, shame on me!

I take a look at this saw, and it’s incredibly clean for being nearly 30 years old. So I ask the guy what he thinks he needs for it, figuring he’d say $500, and I’d walk away saying I’d need to think about it. He scratches his chin, hmms a bit, and says $130. Not sure what I was thinking, but I say “Okay!” before I even consider the facts that one, I hadn’t mentioned it to Bonny, and two, it was too big to bring home in the car! I pay them and arrange to come back later to pick it up.

Later, after running my errands, I come home and call my dad, who’s been working a 6:30 to 1:30 shift. I say “Ya know that table saw you called me about? Well, I need your truck to go pick it up.” Then I tell Bonny.

All I can say is, I have a sweet, loving, wonderful wife, and her parents should be very proud of her. She is a woman of extraordinary patience and character.

So my dad and I go and pick it up, and he sees the band saw they advertised. It’s huge – bigger than the table saw. He asks about it, and they ask $150, for an industrial metal-cutting band saw worth a few thousand dollars new. I’m thinking go for it, but he says “I don’t know. I could give you $100 for it.” He ends up buying it for $125.

The tablesaw ended up being a 1978 Rockwell Unisaw with a 3 hp, single phase, 230v motor. Along with the Do-All band saw my dad picked up, it was a great find!