I was shooting promotional pictures outside of my new shop that I had just moved into. This is back in 1992, back when men were men and sheep were nervous. I had laid the stretched version of the weekender machine out on a big green tarp when my neighbors came back from lunch. They were real cabinet makers and the saw dust was evident on their shoes and saw dust tracks led into their door.

Since I had not met them yet, they asked me what I was doing and what my company was about. After chatting for a few minutes, they said that they might be able to use one of our machines in their cabinet shop and wanted to know if they could try it out for a while. Their company was named T&R Custom Cabinets at the time.  The T&R was for Tom and Ron, who were the owners.

I told them that they could try it for the next week since I would be away visiting family. When I came back, I saw what they had done with the saw. They had built an 8 foot in-feed and 8 foot out-feed tables on either side of the machine with a built in Biesemeyer stop system to quickly measure what they were cutting.

I was taken aback when I saw what they had done. I said to them, “I guess you want to keep it.” They told me that it saved them a ton of time. (That is a time measurement not frequently used on a stop watch.) They would just take their cut sheet to the saw and cut whatever they needed up to 30”. The model they purchased got named the “Cabinet Maker” after their enthusiastic endorsement. Since then we stretched the cabinet maker rails to make a panel saw kit system. Later we took the kit and built a frame for it and now we are one of the largest panel saw companies in the States with the only carriage that can use different saws, routers and cutting tools.

They have been using their Cabinet Maker for 22 years now, without changing a thing! Can you believe that? It’s pretty amazing to me. Same saw, no squaring issues and nothing has worn out. I think their investment 22 years ago has paid off 100’s of times over. You can ask Tom (Pogue) about it. The company is called Pogue Cabinets, www.poguecabinets.com. Ron, sadly, passed away a few years back. The slots in the original table would accommodate a sliding fence system that could do angles in either direction. The way they set up their machine, they just wanted to do square cut all of the time so our fences were not needed.

When you see something like this, it is a bit nostalgic, like seeing old baby pictures of your kids. It was heartwarming to know that one of our very first machines was still going strong. If anyone out there has a story about their Saw Trax machine that they would like to share, please send it to us or add it to this blog. That is what this blog is all about.

Michael Della Polla
Founder of Saw Trax Mfg. Inc.