Roger Mills was thinking very hard :
I collected one this afternoon, after a bit of collection fiasco.
It is definitely a compound mitre, you can use either or both angles in the same cut. The bevel only does 0 to 45 to the left. Not actually tried it yet, but seems well built - no detectable play or give at all and very rigid. Surprisingly, much more rigid than my cheapo mitre chop saw - even at full out extension. The laser guide is also separately switched on and off to the blade motor.
snipped-for-privacy@DENTURESsussex.ac.uk explained :
I bought one too, the one sold with the spare visor, but I don't remember paying that much for it. Mine is still going strong a very comfortable, just a bit heavy compared to my other much more expensive one.
Harry Bloomfield formulated on Thursday :
A little more following setting it up and running a few test pieces on it. It runs smooth and fairly quite, the machined faces are very good as good as you would expect on a top price machine and it moves very smoothly back and forth, as if bearings are fitted on the traverse.
The table + and - 45 degrees drop into a notch at zero and the zero is spot on. The bevel marking is similarly spot on.
The laser was not much use, except in a darkened room and (as delivered) it was also 1/16" inside the cut from the right hand side. It is adjustable though and can be set for the left or right edges.
The fiasco - I reserved the only one in stock at any store within 30 miles of home, at an Argos just a couple of miles from home and asked my wife to ring and confirm that it would be collected late this afternoon. Plenty of free parking and it could be collected at their door (its an heavy awkard lump to carry). Well despite my reserving it, it wasn't there - it was at a store 10 miles away and in a town centre with no easy parking and a bus lane passing its front door, in the midst of the rush hour, plus staff unhelpful when asked if it could be collected from their loading bay.
I collected mine this morning, and I'm well impressed.
I was a bit worried that only one branch near me had any stock, and that they only had one. I had visions of a duff one which someone else had bought and brought back. Well, the box *had* been opened and resealed - but the saw hadn't been used, and everything was there.
I've been using it this afternoon to cut some lengths of 2x2 for the frame of a small lean-to shed/tool store. It makes nice clean accurate cuts and - as you say - the sliding mechanism is very smooth. The laser seems to work ok - but I had to partly shut the garage door in order to see it when the sun moved round in that direction. I found that with the workpiece to the right of the blade, aligning the pencil mark with the laser produced the cut in exactly the right place but, with the workpiece on the left, I had to offset it a bit to allow for the thickness of the blade. I didn't realise it was adjustable - I'd better read the book!
I've screwed my saw to a piece of scrap worktop, with a batten screwed to the underside - which I can grip in a Workmate to make a nice firm job without needing to install it anywhere permanently.
I'll be interested to hear from anyone who buys the Lidl jobby next Monday - as to how well that performs and whether or not the blade *does* tilt.
Is it just me who is thick, or does anyone else get the angle 90 degrees out? I was doing some skirting work a couple of years ago and got it wrong a couple of times before I realised what I was doing wrong.
Don't all jump on me :-)
Dave
Roger Mills laid this down on his screen :
It doesn't seem to mention it in the book, but if you look at the laser head holder, it has a slotted bracket with two cross head screws. Ease the two screw out a little to move it side to side. To align the beam along the whole length of the cut, you can rotate the laser head - there is a single screw holding that. That on mine was spot on.
I've just noticed it seems to have an adjustable depth stop too. Nice piece of kit.
That is a good idea. I was doing some fence work about a month ago and I could have done with something like that. I don't want those supports that have rollers on the top, as I have nowhere to store them.
Thanks
Dave
Twenty odd years ago I made one of those garden tables which the built in benches, which you see in pub gardens. I found I used it more often as an outdoor work bench, than for eating at.
Yeah, I screwed that up once, too, doing one of the kids' bedrooms. That was before I had the mitre saw here (I moved to the US in 2007, and all my original tool collection's still in the UK and probably uneconomical to ever ship - grr), so I was cutting by hand using a little 45-degree jig that I'd made. Luckily the bit I messed up was long enough to use elsewhere in the room, and I'd bought a whole bundle of skirting anyway (90% of which is still in my workshop - fitting it to other rooms is one of those round tuit jobs)
I since read you're not supposed to make mitre joins for skirting though if possible - one piece is supposed to be cut straight and the other done with a coping saw to follow the contour of the first, presumably to create some kind of sliding joint so that any expansion or contraction of the skirting doesn't produce either a bowing effect or result in a big gap showing up at the mitre. Be interesting to know if folk do go to that much trouble though, or if they just use a regular mitre join! :-)
cheers
Jules
Ta! I'll have a look tomorrow. Like you say, it *isn't* in the book.
Yes, that *is* in the book - but I'd discovered it before I read the book. There are actually *two* depth stops - both of which are adjustable. The first is the normal one - which ensures that the blade goes low enough to cut through the wood without fouling the bottom of the slot. The factory setting on mine seems fine. The second one enables you to cut channels in the wood without cutting right through. There is a screw with a locknut. Normally, the end of the screw passes through a hole in a plate - and does nothing. But there's a little lever which moves a solid bit of the plate into position, and limits the saw's plunge when the screw meets this plate.
Like you say, a nice piece of kit. FWIW, the customer reviews on the Argos website are all pretty positive. When you buy cheap tools (and this *is* cheap compared with similar professional tools) you're never quite sure what to expect. But I can't fault this one - it's brilliant! OK, it might not stand up to daily professional use - but for DIY use, it's all I could ask of it.
Everyone does that (although I doubt dennis will admit it)!
Roger Mills has brought this to us :
Yes and I have just tested that feature. It looks crude, but it certainly works well. I have also corrected the laser, I just clamped a
9" wide bit of timber down, sawed it through halfway and tapped the lasers bracket over gently with a blunt drift - no need to undo the Phillips screws. The plastic bracket is fairly slippy through the screws, so it moved quite easily. I got the line split perfectly between the top surface and the cut edge all the way along the 9" width of the cut.Agreed and I don't think the Lidl one will be nearly as good as this.
Worst for me is cutting mitres in cornicing which has a top and a bottom. My saw is towards the end of the bench so on long lengths I have to turn them round.
In message , Harry Bloomfield writes
A bit like insurance or anything else which is fine until you need it
Personally, I wouldn't take a chance on a cheap no-name helmet
(although, I used to ride around in Indonesia with a construction site hard hat on)
I've coped a number of corner joins - I think it gives a neater effect, more easily than trying to mitre something, then finding that your corner is not perfectly square...
I did until I bought a Magic Mitre
Well worth the money, pays for itself on the first job.
I don't dare buy another tool (yet) - we've just had to replace both the car and the cooker.
That technique - called a scribed joint - is normally used for internal corners. And yes it's used.
Cowboys mitre internal corners, everybody mitres external corners. You can get jugs that help with mitres but they only cope with non-orthogonal surfaces in one plane. If two planes are out they are useless IME.
Could be a bit of a challenge on skirting board with an intricate cross section. Fine for simple stuff with a rounded top - although I still invariably mitre everything.
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