Need a new circular saw.

[Andy Burns]

Yes it will cut across an 8x4

[newshound]

I love my two Evolutions, I have a "normal" one and a sliding compound one. Not sure what wattage.

Are you doing proper John Rumm style carpentry, or more rough hacking about?

The evolution blades will do aluminium or steel up to about 3 mm as well as wood. I used the compound one to chop up for firewood the crates which indian sandstone paving comes in; these are rough old bastards full of nails and galvanised strip.

[newshound]

+1. Bearing sizes are pretty standard these days. American kit may have imperial bearings, anything else is likely to have ISO metric ones where the key dimensions come in whole numbers of millimetres. 20 mm bore, 42 mm OD, 12 mm thick, etc. So even with no markings, it's often possible to make a good identification. Deep groove are the most common type. Angular contact are likely to have some markings on them.

[Graeme]

Excellent, thanks.

[John Rumm]

I accidentally cut into one of the fence rails on my table saw with mine ;-)

(and those are 2" diameter steel!)

[dennis]

I cut some old wood on mine and had a perfect section through a hardened steel 2" chipboard screw in one side. The machine was 600W and didn't even notice.

[tabbypurr]

The Mak is the best of my circs easily. All circs can struggle of course. T he Mak gives the cleanest cut with much less vibration, the fact that it's a little slower cutting than the highest power one is not an issue. Power m ania is not a good basis for buying portable tools, it primarily gets you a heavier less wieldy tool.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No need to as most of their products are simply re-branded and available elsewhere.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You'd need a seriously expensive camera to beat a magnifying glass. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I wondered about that. My pretty old B&D tradesman is 1200 watt, and never had it struggle on anything, with a decent blade.

[ss]

Tried a magnifying glass and still couldnt read, macro on an under £200 camera done the deal.

[michael adams]

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong pictures but I can't see a dust take-off on that, capable of accepting a vacuum cleaner hose. Which I find essential when cutting material like MDF.

The fact that saws were sold for years without such a useful and inexpensive feature is rather hard to believe.

Nowadays on popular sizes TCT blades are cheap as chips and are probably worth around 500W during their first 10 mins of use.

Same goes for router bits IME.

michael adams

...

[rick]

Upshot was I bought a new one - one that I had not originally considered

- a Hitachi C7SB2 powerful beast - arrived today - and very pleased with it.

Cast Aluminium base, positive 90 degree lock and 1700W power clinched it