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I Have a makita 2704 table saw, and its a good saw, but it has a two design flaws, theirs no lateral adjustment for the blade, and the throat plate sucks, and you cant buy zero clarence throat plates, I think ill buy a Bosch next.
I am a first time purchaser and, for that matter, user of a table saw. It does securely tighten when you follow the owners manual. I did so and fence remained tight and cuts were extremely accurate. Got the saw on Ebay (sorry Amazon) for about $430 and the stand on Ebay (oops again) for $196. It does store the saw vertically. Completely satisfied thus far. I purchased the 2704 separate from the stand. Just read a bit and you'll see that you merely have to adjust two screws.
Just basically use it for ripping at this point. However, I can counter some of the nay sayers with regard to the rip fence. As for the stand.I love it. It is very strong and works effortlessly.
Shortly after that it stripped again so I made my own replacement parts that work much better. Everything on it worked great. I Bought this saw about a year ago and thought it was wonderful. Unfortunately other cheap plastic parts on it are starting to fail and fall apart. A couple of months later the handle to tighten the miter adjustment stripped out. I ordered replacement parts from Makita and received them in a very timely fasion. I am a big believer in Makita tools and own many for my contracting business, but I strongly suggest buying a different saw. The best part on the saw is the folding stand which I now use to hold my old De Walt rack and pinion table saw.
Well after running some wood thought it I am glad I got it. Works great and runs super smooth.
I've owned my Makita 2704 for about 8 months, and I've completed several projects with it, including three nice pieces of furniture. It's possible to wiggle your arm under the saw base to reach the button for releasing the blade guard latch on the Makita, but there has to be a better way. The Bosch allows such alignment, why not Makita. And finally, my biggest aggravation -- the fence and the table extension. All those are very nice features.So why only three stars. I know the 2704 is a contractors saw, but that seems a poor excuse for leaving off any way to adjust the alignment of the table to the blade. I'm an occasional weeked do-it-your-selfer. The throat plate is very flimsy, which can really affect accuracy when cutting small pieces.
I managed to fix the problem by using two small Irwin clamps to hold the table extension solidly in place, but it should not be necessary to jury rig a fix like that, and it it wouldn't work very well for ripping anything more than a foot wide. Some further complaints. The bottom line is that some inexcusable design flaws have marred what otherwise would be the state of the art best portable saw on the market. I know some people say they don't use guards. I bought the saw because of the stand, the T slots in the table, the adjusting wheel for the blade bevel, and the large rip depth. The fence locks onto the table extension, which is not very securely held in place by the supposed locking levers.
There's also the nuisance of putting on or removing the blade guard. I hope they're not ripping without one, because if they are they will soon enough eat a board. So the fence (actually the table extension) wobbles from side to side as you push your work through the saw. It's a real shame.
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