I'm going to replace my bannisters so am going to have to make quite a lot of 45 degree cuts and would like to get a powered mitre saw. Unfortunately I'm broke at the moment and can't really afford to spend much. Is it worth getting the 50 quid Ferm one from Screwfix (or any similarly priced one) or should I save the money until I can get something decent and do it all manually?
I'd have thought that unless you're an absolute whizz with a handsaw, even a cheap power saw will give you a better result, especially over a large number of repetitive cuts. If you do a few test cuts first to check out the Ferm, you'll be able to adjust for any inaccuracies in the angle or whatever.
I got the even cheaper one that Screwfix had for £29.99 (Spanish sort of name that I can't remember). It served me well until a couple of weekends ago when I tried to cut a bit of 4" x 2" at an angle it couldn't quite cope with. The guard stuck in the wood, I pushed harder to get it to cut, the guard got itself out of the way and the saw dug suddenly into the wood and stalled. That in itself probably wouldn't have been disastrous except that the shock load appears to have broken a tooth in the gearing so that, although it still cuts, it makes a horrendous noise.
For £29.99 it's given me good service and would be still if I hadn't misused it.
I now have an SIP sliding whatsit saw which can cut up to 12" x 2" or thereabouts.
That smacks a little of snobbery. With care and patience and an awareness of the tool's limitations it's perfectly possible to do a "proper job", even one involving repeated cuts, with an inexpensive mitre saw.
No it isn't - just practical experience of using a cheap mitre saw and then a decent one.
The limitations are repeatability of angle and cutting position. They are simply poor on this class of saw. If you are prepared to accept the position of a cut being a couple of mm out and a degree or two out as being a good job then fine, a saw in this class may be good enough.
Personally I think that that's a poor job but make no apology for wanting to achieve good results.
If you want to see the difference, go and try out a Makita LS1013 or DeWalt DW708 and compare with one of these £50 jobs.
I use a mitre saw a great deal so invested in a Makita LS1013. It cuts spot on every time. However, at a cost approaching £500, it would not be a sensible purchase for a one time staircase job.
This does not mean that one should not use this quality of saw and achieve a good job, so in this case, renting a decent saw makes a lot of sense.
Have you actually tried cutting a whole staircase set of spindles, rails and newel posts accurately with a £25-50 saw and then measured the angles and lengths.?
This is an application where accuracy is critical to a good outcome. If the lengths of the spindles are wrong by a mm or two or the angles by a degree or two, the staircase, when finished, will look like absolute crap.
Buying a decent mitre saw, which will probably be needed anyway to get enough capacity to cut the newel posts and possibly the rails, may well not make sense. Renting one in this case rather than making a pig's ear makes eminent sense.
make an already innaccurate cut even worse. They are a gimmick on this level of product.
God almighty how do you think they were made in Victorian times, with a handsaw and mitre block. My father would never let an apprentice near a powered saw until they had proved they could cut an angle by hand.
*ANY* tool is only as good as the person using it, if you need to spend £500 on a powered saw to achieve accurately fare enough. I can't boost that I possess one of these, but can boost that I can still cut the angle on a 7 ins skirtingboard to fit around a corner with a HANDSAW. We will never see eye to eye on this tool quality equals finished quality issue, I do this for a living day in day out , what do you do ?
That would be infinitely preferable to using one of the cheap shed saws but would take a little longer.
That is true to an extent, but a good mitre saw will give repeatably better results than a cheap shed one.
The same is true of a number of other tools such as jig saws.
You might want to go and try out some good quality mitre and jig saws
- the results are spectacularly better.
That's fine. Unfortunately not everybody is able to do that either through lack of skill or lack of practice.
The question was about how to achieve a good result for a one off job. For most people, using a handsaw, unless used in a good mitre box will not achieve a good result, so your point about your being able to cut
180mm skirting with a handsaw is not that relevant.
A low end powered mitre saw won't either because the mechanisms have too much slop to give repeatable results.
A good quality powered mitre saw will give repeatable and good results but clearly does not make sense to buy for a day's work unlikely to be repeated. Therefore renting one makes much better sense than buying something at about the same price that won't.
It can have a great deal to do with it and certainly does in this case.
A variety of things and I also do work with wood. When I do, I prefer to do so with good quality tools which I find certainly do help to achieve good results.
The first one of these I bought from B&Q was pretty bad - it wouldn't do repeatable accurate cuts. Too much play somewhere. Ok for rough work.
I bought a bigger one, and that is ok giving repeatable cuts - although you have to check it each time with a protractor if wanting a 90 degree etc - the scale isn't accurate enough.
A decent make will have indents for the common angles which will be accurate. You really do get what you pay for.
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