Inca 12" Tablesaw
by Dennis

I've owned a 12" Inca table saw for over 10 years and love it! It's the 2100, which looks the same as the 2200 except that mine was made in Switzerland and has an aluminum top instead of the cast iron (I believe) on the 2200.

Here are the things I don't like about my Inca:

  1. The on/off switch has small, hard to operate buttons. I think the 2200 has a much better switch. (On the plus side, the switch is a magnetic switch with overload protection.)
  2. It cost much more than the Delta. I splurged on this to reward myself because I had been working extra hard, long hours on my regular job and felt I deserved it. Now, I'm happy I did.
  3. The blade that came with it, a 12" Inca, was only so-so. I believe the 2200 comes with a Forrest blade, which is what I use (the Woodworker II, 10" with 1" arbor).

Here's what I like about it:

  1. It is relatively easy to tune it up, using a dial indicator, to extremely tight tolerances. There was a time, when I was working for a high tech company and surrounded by engineers, that I set the blade-to-miter gauge grooves and the fence-to-miter gauge grooves to a tolerance I measured in microns, but that was clearly silly and overly compulsive. But the point is, that the saw was cabable of it, even if it made no sense.

  2. The fence is even better than the Biesemeyer that was on my previous saw. It is extremely easy to make it parallel to the miter gauge grooves and it holds the setting for a long time. I can rotate the rip fence to expose four different surfaces next to the wood I'm ripping. This is hard to explain, you should probably get a better explanation from your dealer. I use this feature all the time, alternating between the "low" fence which makes it easy to use a push stick and the "high" position when I'm feeding wood on edge.

  3. It's true that the rails can be adjusted left and right, which gives you as much capacity to the right of the blade as to the left, but I have the long rails (which I recommend if you cut much plywood) and almost never change the position of the rails. The rails have a built-in measuring tape (that is instantly adjustable if you change blades) that I normally use instead of measuring and marking the wood. And when you switch to the "high" position of the fence, the "window" where you read the tape measure position changes by exactly the amount the fence differs from the "low" position. Pretty clever!

  4. It has an outstanding dust collection built-in. There's a metal shield that covers both sides of the blade, below the table, and a fancy airfoil to direct the dust into a 4" outlet on the back of the saw. I get some sawdust blown up, onto the table, but maybe 90% goes down the dust collector pipe.

  5. The guard that came with it was, like most guards, was impractical, and I took it off. However, the splitter is not a part of the guard and is attached behind the blade, under the table. I leave it on 99% of the time. Splitters are an important safeguard against kickback. I believe that because I've set the blade and the fence accurately and always use the spitter, I've never had a serious case of kickback.

  6. The miter gauge is better than any stock one I've seen. It quickly slides left and right and comes with a "drop stop," which I use frequently.

I could go on, but I'm sounding like a commercial. I have no affiliation with Inca, etc.

So I guess you could say I'm about as happy with my Inca 2100 as I could reasonably be. It cost more, but I expect it to last me the rest of my life, so the additional cost per year is miniscule. By the way, I built my own extension table and legs, which saved me money. I also shopped around and saved some more money.

Good luck,




without the written permission of the publisher.