Bear with me on this one...

My wife got "us" this neat(ish) thing for V-Day, it's like a shadow box with these dollhouse picture frames on the back and in each frame are small pics of us. She said it was called "The Museum of Us". Pretty sweet, she always knocks the sappy things out of the park.

Problem is, it's from one of those Chinese vendors popping up on Facebook or whatever. I'm not particularly artsy crafty, but I could've done a better job, particularly with these two LED mini spotlights. Instead of just making the shadow box deeper to conceal (for example) a small power source/battery pack they just ran the cables out to a USB plug. It'll look like ass if you tried to hang it on a wall.

Anyway, I was like "Heck, I wanna make a shadow box for my military stuff anyway, maybe I could make these other things as well." But I don't have a table saw.

So do any of you know of a small table saw that allows for the blade to tilt 45* and cut those grooves for the front 'glass' etc.?

Dewalt has a couple well regarded saws in the 400-600 dollar range. Anything less than that I'd be wary of.

I like buying tools as much as the next guy, but a table saw to me is either borrow or buy once cry once.

Two years ago, I was faced with buying a tool I'd possibly use once a year right now and hopefully more often once I retire. It was also going to take up a similar amount of space as the OP's proposed table saw. Turns out my neighbor has the tool mounted to a workbench in his garage, and was happy to let spend ~30 minutes in his garage knocking out my project. BTW, I haven't needed the tool since then so my once a year estimate was erroneous.

Perhaps the OP has a friend/neighbor with an underutilized table saw who will let him knock out the shadow boxes?

Clean 45° corners are actually difficult to do. The small hobby type table saws are not really designed to make that easy. For a shadow box I’d consider buying one from a craft store. If you have your heart set on a construction type table saw, Dewalt makes a decent product for the price.

An L fence on a good tablesaw can make a nice clean 45. A router table with a chamfer bit does a good job too.

The commercial guys I know use DeWalt. I had a '90s craftsman that was GREAT but don't have any data on their current quality.

For intermittent use, I would be tempted by the top end of Harbor Freight or the house brand Kobalt.

My current saw is a 1946 craftsman 220 volt belt drive with a cast iron table, built into a roller table made with 3/4 and 2x6. Belt drive gives you more blade height, as the pulley is smaller diameter than the motor diameter, but it is complexity, weight, size and cost. There really is no comparison, but that isn't what you are looking for.

For frame making, which is what you are really describing, a sliding compound miter saw is a good alternative. With a table saw, a sliding compound miter, a handheld jig saw (buy the Bosch), and a decent router, you can make almost anything.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ArtieS,

Forgive me, I’m a little slow this morning.

What are you wanting to cut at 45 degrees? Just the corners or putting a bevel down the whole length of a piece of wood?

Just the corners, a good manual miter box would be the ticket like this one: Link.

I’d look into a router and router table to cut grooves.

Not saying these things can’t be done with a table saw, but setting a table saw up to do them safely can be time consuming and not inexpensive. It took about 15 years, but I can barely tell where I ran my right hand pointing finger through my Delta table saw.

I've been looking and have settled on this Dewalt. It should do everything I need and then some.

DeWalt portable table saw.

I have the saw SpinZone has referenced. I,m very happy with it and it was a great improvement over the Craftsman 8" compact table saw I was using.

One thing I would recommend is getting one of these dust collectors, it does a great job of collecting the sawdust and keeping your work area clean.
https://www.menards.com/main/t...01883168-c-10092.htm

Dremel used to make small style tools, like table saws, drill presses, routers, etc., for small/miniature projects. Might look into those. I'm not sure if they are still making them, or if you'd have to look on the used market.

That dust collector is awesome. I’ve had one for 20 years.