Re: Table Saw Surface Treatment Fail
I have a General 12" cabinet saw and a 10" contractors. I also sold these, Delta, Jet, Powermatic and Saw Stop in another life. None of the spray on stuff is worth a darn so don't waste your money. Just clean it with Acetone, then use a thin coat of Johnson's paste wax. Do it periodically as regular maintenance even if your not using the saw. If its rusty, use your random orbital sander with some 220 paper to clean it up. The better the saw the fewer problems because the cast iron is seasoned better. If you are running a bunch of exotic wood I recommend you clean the top with Acetone and 0000 steel wool first, make your cuts and then wax it again.This will help to prevent contamination of the wood and finsihing problems down the road. Wood will slide on the bare clean steel better than over wax, the wax is just to keep the corrosion in check.
I couldn't disagree with you more as far as those products not working. I own and use all of the brands you sold and more. I have used them for 12 years in my own shop, my Fathers before mine. We have run 10's of thousands of board feet of material and 10's of thousands of sheets of plywood over the saws and other tools. When business was booming I bought them in 6 pack cases frequently as they work very quickly. The only downside is they cost much more than paste wax. These days business is slower and the budget is smaller so we use the cheap paste wax, it takes 3x longer to use.
As to cleaning the top with solvent... i wouldn't do that unless you needed to clean up a spill of some sort. The cast iron tops are of course porous and build a patina that takes less and less time to keep slick if you don't strip them. They also are much less apt to rust from sweat drips in the summer if they have a good patina. Some of the equipment has smooth steel, aluminum or phenolic which is never as slick but it helps a great deal to coat them as well. "Slip-it", i think it is called, seems to work best on the phenolic. Some of my more expensive equipment has a textured/rippled cut to the cast iron. People mistake it for poor machining, it is done on purpose, it actually helps the wood glide across it and it almost never needs attention.
If rusty, they make great consumer stuff sold in kits. They are a little pricey but get the job done and keep you from buying larger quantities of product you will probably never use more than once. Woodcraft sells "Top Saver" which works well.
I would never suggest someone use a sander on a machined top. An inexperienced hand, even with 220 grit, could do a lot of damage.
