In my dad’s workshop is a very old Altendorf circular panel saw. I love this machine. Especially for aluminum. There is nothing fancy about it. It’s just solid and strong. Low tolerance is for my opinion the key to work safely with aluminum.

The downside of this whole story is, this workshop with this saw is around 550 km drive from my place. Getting a similar saw is not an option because I have not the space for It and no rotary current power plug in the wall. The internet is full of diy saws but on most builds I missed this precisely moving table. Luckily I own an old Mafell circular saw.

So I’ve spent a bit of time in front of the computer and played around with different designs and different materials. In the end I came up with a body made of 18mm waterproof plywood and a table, moving on linear bearings. The downside of this linear bearing concept is the limited movement of the table. For me not such a big deal as I focus more on cutting smaller aluminum parts.

The saw itself is mounted on a 5mm aluminum plate. I used this instead of wood because I don’t want to limit the maximal cutting depth. I skipped the possibility to angle the sawblade because the movement of the body of the handsaw would not have worked well with this linear bearing design.

Here is a rendering of the cad model:



In the end I was able to build the whole saw out of one single 2500 x 1250 x 18 mm plywood piece.



The base piece prepared for assembly with lamellos:



Adjusting the linear bearings:

Assembled:

Angle scale:

It’s working not too bad but there are still some small issues to solve: end stops for the table and on the long term the linear bearings need some kind of cover, to protect them of the saw dust. And of course I need an proper aluminum saw blade!

diy circular saw