Radial arm saw versus 12" compund sliding miter saw question.

[Pete]

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 -- Thomas J. Watson- Hide quoted text -

I am the original poster of this question. I have a Grizzly G0444Z TS, a 10" miter saw, and sears RAS. My intentions were now to sell my recently bought RAS and 10" MS and buy the Craftman 12" SCMS which is on sale at Sears. What I really want to do is free up some space in my shop by getting rid of the RAS and hope to buy a drum sander to put in the space where the RAS now is. That's why I asked the question would I be losing anything by getting the scms. The only difference I see is not being able to rip. I have other means to do the other things an ras offers. Thanks again for your opinions.

[Max]

That was my point.

Max

[Gordon Shumway]

The one big reason I would not get rid of my RAS is for cross cutting dados in long pieces. There are several ways to accomplish this task without a RAS but I prefer the RAS. I doubt a SCMS could perform that task well or with repeatability.

Gordon Shumway

Our Constitution needs to be used less as a shield for the guilty and more as a sword for the victim.

[Puckdropper]

Gordon Shumway wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Unless you were doing pieces on a regular basis, a router could handle doing the dados over long pieces. Some of them even have a provision for a fence to keep the router parallel to the reference edge.

Puckdropper

[dadiOH]

Forget planing...the rotary planer leaves a terrible surface and takes a long time.

Forget routing. Speed is too low, collets chintzy, lots of wobble.

Molding head is fine.

Horizontal drilling can be handy.

Sanding can be handy...

1. Vertical drum works well; at least as well as on a drill press.
2. I often use a sanding plate in preference to my dedicated belt/disk machine because I can sand to a precise length.
3. I used to use a 9" soft pad for surface sanding, worked fine. I now use a Performax.

[Jim Hall]

[Jim Hall]

[whit3rd]

Or, heavy pieces. SCMS is OK for 2x4 lumber, but a RAS can make a 3" notch in a 8x8 beam.

I also use stubs of 2x10 to make wedges, by using the RAS to make parallel straight cuts, then parallel slant cuts; there can be

30 'dadoes' in the plank when I'm done, and the wedges just pop off with a chisel (or, if I'm in a hurry, a ripsaw). Can a SCMS really do that kind of work?

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 4 Dec 2009 12:16:25 -0800 (PST), the infamous Pete scrawled the following:

quoted text -

Having been burnt by Searz before (they won't get another dime of my money for any reason), I'd go with another brand of SCMS. You can rip on the Griz TS. I need to move up to a 12" SCMS myself. The old $25 Delta was old when I got it and I've had to finish cuts on 2x8s with my ryoba several times. That gets old in a hurry.

It's really too bad that someone hasn't adapted an SCMS to be able to rip lumber, isn't it?

-- Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. -- Thomas J. Watson

[krw]

We drove up to Birmingham yesterday so I stopped by Woodcraft. All of their Forrest blades had the good for: with pictures of a RAS, Cabinet saw, SCMS, and all but one had a picture of a contractor's saw. No idea why a contractor's saw is any different than a cabinet saw, but...

Oh, good grief. Do you always keep your rip blade on your table saw?

[krw]

Don't use dull blades. You'll put your eye out.

As I said, none of the blades at Woodcraft this weekend had any limitations on the types of saws they were designed for, though for some reason one didn't have the symbol for a contractor's saw but it did have the symbol for a cabinet saw.

I can somehow believe that one blade might cut cleaner on a table saw vs. RAS but I ain't buying the "injure the tools" argument. I wasn't born last night.

[krw]

Depth of cut adjustment?

[Leon]

May I suggest you go directly to the Forrest site?

may have been looking at thin kerf blades. Typically a contractors will cut faster with a thin kerf blade.

I do not use a rip blade, at all. I have always for the last 20 years used a general purpose/combination blade for ALL cuts. For the last 10 years I have only used a Forrest WW2 regular kerf blade on my saw. I have two. I switch them out when I send the dull one out for resharpening.

[Leon]

Most major brand SCMS have a dept of cut adjustment so that the blade will only go down a predetermined distance.

[Leon]

.

Item 1.4 on this pdf

7, stopper Arm

[Gordon Shumway]

If you don't believe it, try quickly pulling your RAS though a wide thick piece of hardwood and see what you end up with.

Go to Forrest and read what they have to say.

Shumway

Our Constitution needs to be used less as a shield for the guilty and more as a sword for the victim.

[J. Clarke]

Either two pieces of hardwood or a stalled saw and it doesn't matter _what_ blade you're using that will be the case.

just shilling for Forrest?

[Gordon Shumway]

They have different blades (hook angles) for different saws. In the self destruct test I described above, that was to simulate what could happen on a RAS if the wrong blade was used and it could result in the blade being pulled into the work more aggressively than the operator was expecting.

As far as being a shill for Forrest -- not hardly. However, after looking at their site they didn't say much about hook angle relative to specific saw types. On the following page for Rockler read what is said about hook angle there. They say it much better than I could. Oh yeah, I'm not connected with Rockler either :-)

Shumway

Our Constitution needs to be used less as a shield for the guilty and more as a sword for the victim.

[Mike M]

Though all this information is available. Idiots are able to bankrupt many companys.

Mike M

[J. Clarke]

And how does that "injure the tools"?

work harder at controlling the carriage than with others, but "injure the tool"? Sorry, but if stalling the saw "injures the tool" it was a piece of crap to begin with.