OK, So I Went to Harbor Freight...

[Just Another Joe]

And bought their 12" SCMS.

It's still in the box, so what am I in for with the saw. Most of the comments over the last year, or so, have been pretty favorable concerning this saw.

Joe

[Bill]

I know someone who has it and likes it. Good luck!

[nailshooter41]

I actually have a friend of mine that has one and uses it. The "slide" was kind of rough on it, so he took apart the slide rails, carriers, rollers, etc., and gave them a good cleaning. A light lube, reassembly, and he now has a pretty nice saw. Pretty accurate, too!

Robert

[Larry Blanchard]

I've got one. All in all, a great buy for the money and a good saw regardless of the money.

First thing you do is save the blade that came with it for rough stuff and buy a good blade with lots of teeth. I bought the Freud Diablo D12100X which has 100 teeth. Great blade.

Next you make a zero clearance insert and finally a zero clearance fence.

Now you're in business.

Check to make sure all the angles are correct - mine were out of the box but I may have just been lucky.

[clare]

Another "partially assembled kit" that can be made into a (half) decent tool.

[Leon]

While that may be true, it comes at a $300~$1200 savings over what the competition has to offer.

I typically don't go for this level of tool but when the savings is this great it is hard to go wrong if you have the aptitude for making adjustments and tweaking.

[Night.Reader]

My youngest son buys a lot of Harbor Freight tools, and likes them. He has a metal lathe, welder, and milling machine, and repairs and refines them as needed. His life on his tools exceeds more on more expensive tools, but I also don't spend the time repairing and making custom parts for them like he is doing. Right now he is turning a new brass part to replace some part that broke. Don't know which tool, but as said, the savings can be considerable.

[DerbyDad03]

I don't have a dust collection system in my shop, so I typically set up my shop vac to collect the dust on a tool by tool basis. I have a plastic bin behind my miter saw and I can position my shop vac hose to hang in the open area of the bin to collect the vast majority the sawdust.

One time I needed to do some clean cuts, so I set up a zero clearance fence , hung the shop vac hose in its normal position, turned on the vac and proc eeded with my first cut.

I was immediately met with a blast of sawdust right in my face. The zero cl earance fence completely changed the air flow and sent the debris up and to wards me instead of up and back into the bin. I have to make sure that I re position the shop vac hose to hang higher and more towards the front of the saw when I am using the zero clearance fence. It's not as easy a set-up be cause the hose is more in "mid-air" than in the bin.

I really need to make a jig to hold a length of PVC pipe in the correct pos ition so I don't have to deal with the floppy hose, but I never seem to fin d time to do that. I know I've spent more time with individual set-ups than the total time it would take to make a jig, but I'm sure we all know how t hat goes.

[Larry Blanchard]

I've seen some of that too. So far I've just lived with it. One thing you might try is to drill a 3/4" or so hole at the outside end of the zero clearance slot. In most cases it wouldn't be covered and might suck down some of that sawdust.