Excalibur Sliding Table Review

By Garrett Lambert

Mine's the 49" model that with the fence at the front will cross-cut a 4x8 panel. Capacity with the fence at the rear is 40".

The good:

the fence is a well-designed very strong aluminum extrusion with lots of T-slots for jigs, and contains a slide-out extension stop for repeat cuts up to - I think - 8' in length. Angle cut adjustments - including re-setting to zero - are easy. However, I never trusted it for precise mitres. Transferring the fence from back to front takes a few seconds, but more thought should have gone into the hardware.

The okay:

initial assembly and set-up are trial and error, and take several hours. Once everything's in place and aligned, you do not want to move it, i.e. forget the mobility kit, especially if the floor is uneven. The table slides on UHMV pads and is kept on track by adjustable side bearings. Getting everything aligned correctly is really picky, but that's the key to good performance.

The not okay:

as the Excalibur photo shows, the components are lightweight and the unit is really not very sturdy. For example. The legs are 1" tubing and leveling is achieved by 2 slugs threaded into an outer tube and simply pressing against an inner one. Dropping a heavy sheet of 3/4 MDF on it or just bumping against the edge of the table can knock it out of alignment, so you have to be careful. Even though you remove the left hand table extension - and use the same holes to mount the Excalibur - the rig occupies a lot of space both beside and behind the saw in order to enable the table to slide back enough to position a 4' panel in front of the blade. That makes it a long walk to get to the outfeed side of the saw, and I can't count the number of times I walked into the arm on the left infeed side. (And after whacking the same bruise yet again, had to also re-align yet again.)

My current basement shop's too small for the table so it's been stored in the crawl space for the past 6 years. Since then, and because I store my panel products in the garage, I've been using a straight edge and a circular saw to cut them to within about 1/16th. I cut to finished size on the tablesaw. This has proved to be a LOT easier than muscling sheet goods into the shop and up and onto the table.