Ryobi’s burly BT3000 table saw has been a mainstay of their line for nearly a decade. This year, it appears to have burped up a baby brother.
The BTS10 10″ table saw is just one of the new Ryobi tools I was introduced to at their editors’ conference a couple of weeks ago, but it’s one that impressed me. At 40 pounds, it advances Ryobi’s new focus on compact, portable tools. The weight of the floor model was distributed nicely and was easy to lift. I didn’t have quite as much luck with the sample in the hands-on shop, but that could have been, as one Ryobi employee pointed out to me, because it was bolted down.
The most impressive feature of the BTS10, to my mind, is the bevel adjustment. Turning the lever you see attached to that round yellow disk, on the side of the saw, ratchets your bevel adjustment into place?anywhere in a range of 45 degrees left or right?and keeps it there: no guesstimates, fudging and constant readjustment necessary.
If you want to “do the numbers,” the BTS10 has a maximum cutting depth of 3″ at 90 degrees and 2 1/2″ at 45 degrees, and its maximum ripping width is 9 1/2″. The cast aluminum table measures 16″ x 25 3/4″ ?enough to make it a very usable saw if you want to carry it around with you during a remodeling project. Power comes from a 13 amp, 115 volt universal direct-drive motor that runs at 4700 rpm, very adequate for the saw.
(Speaking of power, there was some brief excitement during that aforementioned hands-on session. The Greenville, South Carolina, area where Ryobi’s headquarters is located was experiencing a thunderstorm on the day of the editors’ conference. While the bunch of us were in the shop trying to get our grubby mitts on all the tools, the power went out to the lights. But not to the tools! A couple seconds of standing in pitch blackness while you can still hear a circular saw screeching is a couple of seconds when I was very glad I was on the other side of the room.)
But now, to paraphrase a prominent participant on one of the woodworking forums, I’m back from the shop! (Check out Ralph’s hinge mortise jig project in the September/October Woodworker’s Journal, by the way.) And I have a few more things to tell you about the BTS10.
First of all, it comes with a 24-tooth carbide-tipped blade, a locking rip fence, and an onboard wrench and miter gauge storage area. Second, the cost for this tool is $99 at Home Depot. That was another big announcement at the editors’ conference: the entire line of Ryobi tools will be available in all Home Depot stores by September. If you’d like more information before then, you can check out www.ryobitools.com or call 800-525-2579. Unfortunately, Ryobi did not send a BTS10 home with conference attendees, but it likely would have almost fit in a suitcase.
