table saw news

As you will remember from announcements on various national news outlets, my table saw motor burned up. That is really no big deal, unless you want to cut something with the table saw. It is hard reach under the table to keep spinning the blade AND push the board through.
So I looked into rewinding the motor (not done any more), getting a new motor (cheaper to buy a new saw), buying a new saw (mostly poor quality unless it comes as part of a sawmill) or buying someone else's piece of junk. I rapidly narrowed it down to the junk option because one of the guys I play gof with had three sitting in his shop and he didn't use any of them. Even better, one was wired for 220 which was especially appealing because I don't have 220.
So Matt and I wired up the tailgate on the truck and went to pick it up. We carried the saw to the truck (I say we because Matt is going to read this, but actually he didn't lift much at all, it was mainly me). Don, the gleeful former owner, told us to flip the saw over into the bed of the truck--it was too heavy to lift. It was so heavy that we couldn't keep it from slamming down into the bed. We commented to each other on the way home that it hit hard enough to take ten years off the life of the truck bed and might not have improved the saw much.
I had to wire a 220 plug so Matt started cleaning the saw up: replacing the baling wire and reglueing the bubble gum. After two hours of potential electrocution I plugged her in and I for one was impressed by how quiet it runs. On close inspection, I detected a correlation between the noise level and the speed of the blade. No noise/no speed. Soon Matt noticed the correlation, and was making snide comments about my saw, and snickering behind his hand, and pointing and such.
We loaded it back up, using an improved technique (IT), and took it back to let Don take a look. We unloaded it using IT, remember this thing is heavy and the bed of the truck doesn't have that many decades left on it. Don--now I find this curious because the saw was now back in Don's workshop--Don did not have 220 either! That is, he didn't have a plug. He had hot bare wires sticking out of the wall. He went outside to the other side of the wall and we heard a bunch of banging, and then he came back and announced that the wires were no longer hot. We wrapped the wires around the prongs of the plug and Don went back outside. More banging. He came back in and said I could turn the saw on while he stood over in the corner. I flipped the switch and we immediately started correlating lack of speed and lack of noise.
Now here is the interesting part. Don took a 2-pound hammer and banged that saw--my saw at this point--four or five times. The saw started up, Don cut the wires, we used IT and drove home. More IT and there it is in the garage. I plugged it in and it still works and that's why tigers don't have spots. Anyone with a 2-pound hammer is welcome to stop by and build them a piano or something. BB