Cheap compound mitre saw

I'm going to be getting through a fair bit of sawing in the near future, so can definitely swing something through domestic management. But, long term, it's not going to get a LOT of use, so nothing "pro-grade" needed.

Let's say

Reply to
Adrian
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You won't get much that is decent for that price TBH. Certainly avoid a slider at the bottom of the market. They nearly all need careful adjustment out of the box to get any degree of accuracy/repeatability.

Depending on how you are able to care for your tools, maybe buy a quality one that will hold its value and sell it on perhaps.

Makita, Dewalt perhaps?

Reply to
Bob Minchin

At that price point, avoid anything that is sliding - go for a fixed pivot one.

Reply to
John Rumm

Nothing more frustrating than setting the thing to say 90 or 45 degrees only to find the cut being out.

Other thing is what it will be used for. If say you regularly make shelves, you may need a slider - and one which can cope with the width of material you need. Which can rule out the smaller ones.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

not directly helpful to the OP but I've got a Rexon 8/12" mitre saw, which probably cost about £100 about 10 years ago.

It seems fine, and accurate enough (for my usage anyway, skirting, achitrave, general woodwork etc.

It has a laser guide, which I thought would be a gimmick, but is quite handy. Though that does occasionally need a bit of adjustment

Reply to
chris French

I've got one of these, which has always done everything asked of it (maybe I'm not too demanding?)

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I bought it a few years ago when it was £70. Despite what others say about avoiding cheap sliding saws, the sliders on mine are very sturdy and smooth, and I've not had any problems with them.

Downside? The dust collection bag doesn't work very well and the laser is - at best - intermittent, but I regard that as a bit of a gimmick anyway, and don't bother with it.

Reply to
Roger Mills

P.S. I've screwed mine to a worktop offcut with some battens on the bottom so that it can easily be used on a Workmate (with a batten clamped in the jaws). When not in use, it sits on the top of my table saw.

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Others might find the idea useful regardless of which saw they use.

Reply to
Roger Mills

Ta. I'd seen it in the specs, and wondered if it was a gimmick.

Reply to
Adrian

No plan for shelves - at the moment... Initial job is a couple of hundred planks of 100mm t'n'g board.

Reply to
Adrian

Mmm. Interesting, thanks.

Have to admit, Argos would have been on my "Run a mile" list, assuming it was all disposable crap.

Reply to
Adrian

I got a Metabo

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when Screwfix had it for about 30% off 5 years ago. It was out of true but I loosened the bolts and reset it and later bought a finer TCT blade.

It's been pretty decent. Not super-dooper but good enough for skirting,

4x2 chopping and many many jobs like that.
Reply to
Tim Watts

If that is ok as a max width you shouldn't have too many problems finding a decent one within your budget.

I have a bit of an oddball one - an old B&Q (PP) slider with a 250mm blade which generally does most I ask of it. But it doesn't have indents for 90 degrees etc so needs careful setting for when it matters. I'd love a quality one of the same size - but it would be hard to justify the cost. However, at the price I can't really complain. The ability to handle 12" planks is extremely useful to me.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Reply to
Andy Burns

I just drilled four holes in the jaws of my workmate, and used some bolts and wingnuts to attach the saw directly.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Define "sleepers"?

Jim K

Reply to
JimK

new oak "half" sleepers, sold as 200x50x2400, most tend to actually be

+5% in one or more dimensions.

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They say most will have all four good edges, but some will have one "waney" edge, that was about right, 3/4 of them were all square, I can easily chose the less than perfect ones for out-of-sight positions in my case.

They cut and plane-up a treat, pong a bit though, they were stacked with spacers in them after being sawn, and they'd left plenty of sawdust on them, and presumably all the rain earlier in the year had caused the mould in some of the clumps of sawdust.

Reply to
Andy Burns

That's fine if it's going to live on the Workmate permanently, but a bit of a pain if you want to park it and use the Workmate for other things when it (the saw) is not in use.

I suppose that, with wingnuts, you can fit and remove it without tools - but still slower than doing up the jaws.

Reply to
Roger Mills

To be fair I built my first workshop with a £25 cheap 8" nutool chop saw. If all you need is relatively square cuts lots of times, they will all make a decent enough job of it.

Reply to
John Rumm

I got a Rexon and love it. It can even make perfectly clean cuts on laminat e with the blade moving in the wrong direction and no support for the lamin ate surface. Only downide is it tends to jump on starting if not fixed down . To my surprise the laser proved effective & handy at times.

Some of the cheapies are worse than useless. I once had a Kinzo that adjust ed cut angle on the fly, and the fence exploded violently too. I always use eye protection now! Stay away from plastic base tools if you care about th e angle of cut.

Re depth of cut, with sufficient care its possible to cut halfway, turn the board round and cut the rest.

I'd seriously consider checking out your local used goods shops, you can ge t some fairly good kit sub 100, albeit often well used.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

Mmm. Interesting thought. I'd not even considered that.

I've just been into Wickes for some other stuff, and they had an £80 sliding saw that looked & felt fairly solid, as best you could tell from the very limited movement allowed it, tied down. But, of course, it doesn't appear to be on their website...

Reply to
Adrian

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