SWAG Portaband Table - Base Model

wonderful addition to your portable bandsaw. I put sides on mine and I love it.

Can’t believe I waited so long to get it….. great solution….. would have cost me nearly as much to build a bad version of it myself ….. thx

Love this product! Heavy steel table that clamps in your vice. Recommend you have a large heavy vice for this to work correctly. I ordered the optional “choke out” kit and it works perfectly so the saw can quickly be shut off. Highly recommend this option for your portable bandsaw.

Very nicely made base. Fit my milwaukee saw perfectly. A great option if you want to make your own stand. And definitely opt to include the footpedal.

I had purchased an Anbull R2103 bandsaw with upgraded base from Amazon and had been looking for a base to allow cutting of sheet metal. I researched some alternatives and decided that the Swag tables are way more reasonably priced for stable looking tables. However, there was no existence proof that the Anbull saw would fit. I did find the WEN 94396 manual online and the drawings and instructions for it seem near identical to those for the Anbull.

As a result, I decided to purchase the base table model direct from Swag, in case some unforeseen issues arose when mounting the Anbull saw. My plan was to test things out with the table mounted on my vice and if the saw fitted without issue then I would build up a girder type frame to allow the vice to be freed up.

I followed the Swag instructions and cut my saw's dual wide nut in half (did it the old fashioned way with a hand saw!) and then the band saw was able to be mounted to the table using the 2 holes marked as for the WEN saw. Not many threads being held in the thin nuts and and seemed alarming. No matter what I tried, I could not get the saw blade 90 degrees to the front edge of the table (lets call that the x direction) and traced the problem to the 2 table holes for the WEN not being square to the front edge. They are 50 mils apart in x, almost certainly due to being boxed in by all the other holes in the table! I'd call this an inconvenience and not a problem, as it's debatable whether the slight non perfectness of the saw blade really makes any difference when cutting, other than making the cut a little wider and maybe wearing out the blade faster.

I therefore decided to make a pair of custom T-nuts out of some scrap steel as that would also allow more threads to be in contact with the 'el cheapo' looking Swag supplied bolts. I tapped an M6 thread in each nut, but offset by 25mils from the nut's centerline, to cancel out the table's 50mil offset. So far I have not detected any wear on the 2 supplied M6 bolts after multiple mounts/dismounts to the table when using these custom thicker nuts. The thicker nuts also make aligning the nut to the bolt way easier as one can see the nut in plain view as one slide it under the table's holes. When using the original half nuts this alignment of the bolts to the cut nut was annoyingly difficult to do, given the nuts end up being so for under the table that one needs to shine a light down the holes to even find the nuts!

I also made up a girder based frame to hold the Portable table. It only cost $26 for the girders and some bolts (look up 'Clopay Garage Door Rear Track Hanger Kit' on Homedepot.com) . I did have to get a few more nuts and bolts, but overall the entire frame ended up sub $40.
I had also purchased the Choke-out trigger kit, but found that tough to hold tightly in place to my saw's handle, so I used a couple of scrap 90 degree brackets to lock the control cable end of the trigger (scissors) assembly to my frame. They were conveniently pretty much the right size for this arrangement to work.

I have attached some pictures of my setup and the T-nuts I fabricated.
Overall I'd say that the table is definitely worth the money. It's simple design allows me to quickly move my saw from the Swag horizontal table to its original rod/bar cutting optimized frame.